


Silverfell

by Gilded_Pleasure



Series: Osteogenesis [3]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Aftermath of Incest/CSA, Aww Yeah Tag Massage, Badster doesn't really uhhh, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Dunkle Sans: Armageddon, Earn Your Happy Ending?, Hot Dunkle Action, I promise, I will warn for each chapter!, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Incest, Lazy Gremlin Sans, Light OC Sprinkles, Lots of Worldbuilding and Science-y Reasons For Things, MegALoSpLaiNia, No More Resets, None Comfort With Left Grief, Nontraditional Households, Other, Past Abuse, Puns! Trombones! Upsettios!, Quantum Mechanics, Reader is Nonbinary, SOUL Mechanics (Undertale), Slice of Life and Death, So Much Heartrendingly Tender Love In The Face of Annihilation, Soul Sex, Trauma and recovery, Warnings On Chapters!!, We’re Flirting with DarkFic BUT Gently, Witty Disingenuous Papyrus, WorstOfAllPossibleSters, advanced monsterfucking techniques for thoughtful adults, and Their Fell Counterparts, beep beep motherfucker we’re going to grillby’s, but!!, chronically ill reader, continuum mechanics, hwen ya papaya make-a hte spaghet, lo siento, nontraditional families, reader is they/them, the porn adds 20 lbs, we do PAPSCAPS, we have reached the UnGood Zone, you can fuck the science!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2020-11-22 23:34:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 151,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20882504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gilded_Pleasure/pseuds/Gilded_Pleasure
Summary: Once, there werethreetwo skeletons. Brothers, I think.Papyrus gave you a silver secret to keep in locked in your memory, Sans a silver key you carry in your soul.Red and Edge wash up on your timeline, hand to mouth. Now you’re all going learn about a little thing called consequences as the core of lies comes tumbling down around you. It just needs someone to give it a little push.Someone who should be dead, but isn’t.Someone who has an Integrity you can’t say no to.(This is the direct sequel toA Certain Tenderness.)





	1. embossed fonts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's now a diagetic summary of a Certain Tenderness, aka How Sans Met Reader and they both Helped Frisk, that can be read here:  
https://archiveofourown.org/works/16913070/chapters/50438831
> 
> Which makes a convenient segue into informing you this story won’t entirely be from Reader’s perspective, although you remain extremely…central.
> 
> * You feel relieved.
> 
> Or do you?
> 
> If you desire aid envisioning what the Fell bros look like, here’s their character design:  
https://www.deviantart.com/gildedpleasure/art/my-hand-slipped-809202527

**Preface:**

Math!  
(Science!)  
Art!  
(Science!)  
God!  
(Science!)  
Mine!  
(Science!)  
I control an awkward soul, and my lines  
Are automatic, automatically drawn  
Realizing a multiverse in just one thing  
And then I’m automatic, automatically gone.  
Writing down my infinity  
(paranoia, paranoia)  
Writing for all eternity  
(A paradox, a paradox of) colors relate to numbers, relate to sound, relate to form, relate to war, relate to sex, relate to healing; relate to all go(0)d vibration  
(Formula!!)  
I like to take it easy; I’d like to think I try  
I’d like to think forever; I would not question why  
I’d like to say I’m sorry; I do not know the words  
All I can say right now is everything happens when no one's around.  
Writing down my infinity; writing for all eternity  
Eliminate inner parenthesis; now combine like terms remembering to watch negative signs (OM!)  
I’m RIGHT here, forward: incriminate→fall down; hide soft→inner terminated.  
Be careful with polynomial colors, there can never be an answer  
We can never factor om.  
And I know you've found your pain; it's the last thing you'll ever do  
And you've only got _you_ to thank!  
Why control this awkward soul in my time?  
And then I’m automatic, automatically GOD.  
Fight!  
Fucking fight!  


**—Strapping Young Lad - Skeksis**

https://youtu.be/RjVT0MhSNeo

Okay, so if you don’t know how to mentally account for the concept of “death metal xylophone” you really might need to uhhh listen to this. Besides being in my top ten favorite songs of all time, this is the theme song of this fic. It may…prepare you.

If you need to skip to 4:45, then to grab on to something to avoid fainting once the second round of _writing down my infinity_ kicks in, you are not alone, and yes one of those layered instruments

is a **whoopee cushion**

***

**CONTENT NOTES**

[implied abuse, implied mind control/influence, sexual harassment, violence, unpleasantness]

***

and

you’re in a massive, dimly lit cavern, bluish light seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, although you can see a slight shadow beneath you all on the chilly stone floor. It seems patchy, covered in… lichen?

The skeleton brothers are staring at a house.

You blink rapidly and realize it’s _their_ old house in Snowdin, which Sans had eventually gotten around to showing you. It had put him in a weird mood, the same weird mood going back to any place he’d spent a great deal of time at underground puts him in. It had been dark and empty inside, but he’d showed you his bedroom, which was the same bedroom at his house now. This had been their home for longer than you like to think about too hard, and they still keep some important stuff here. Underground is still the safest place for a lot of things monsters really don’t want humans to get their hands on.

Like what’s in the basement of this house, for example. The outside looks just like it did when you saw it before, and the cold air has a dampness that tastes like the memory of snow.

Except now all the lights are on, spilling out golden from windows on both stories; the little multicolored string lights around the eaves are all lit up, too.

But.

There are _already_ two skeletons already standing in front of it.

A tall one, and a short one.

The way they stand is chillingly familiar, and so very, very _wrong_.

What the tall one’s wearing looks like leather, but it doesn’t creak. The short one’s puffy jacket doesn’t rasp when he flickers forward like a distorted shadow. Silver glints faintly at throats and waists, ankles and wrists, but their approach is both unnerving and silent.

They both have visible eye points like Sans, but… but.

They’re bloody pinpricks in the void, red and threatening even with both of them silhouetted from behind by the golden light from the window. You can make them out, but not distinctly.

“what the _fuck_,” Sans grunts, hunching in on himself like someone punched him in the gut he doesn’t actually have.

“NO,” Papyrus says in a tone that would be flat if it wasn’t shaking. “…_NO_.” You’ve never heard his voice shake like that, not even…

“NO,” he says again, decisively this time. When his hand moves, a fence of bones three rows deep appears between the brothers and the unfamiliar (<strike>eerily familiar</strike>) monsters.

“AND NOW YOU SEE HOW EASY IT IS,” the tall skeleton intones dryly from across it; you all flinch because his voice...his _voice_.

It’s the screech-scrape of steel lodged in bone.

He seems about to take a step forward, one leather-gloved hand gripping the opposite wrist, when the short one suddenly flickers out in front of him. The tall one stops as if frozen, expression and pose unchanging. Like someone hit the fucking pause button or something.

“…thirteen years…three months, fifteen days, twelve hours, ten minutes, twenty-seven seconds. had to’ve been in the ballpark, right?”

The short skeleton grins, reddish-purple iridescence making the grooves beneath his sockets look like wounds. Even in the dim light, you can see familiar landmarks.

The intonation is the same, too.

“otherwise wouldn’t be nothin’ here right now, huh? guess it worked.”

“...no,” Sans breathes beside you. “no, no…”

“seems like there’s a pretty bad case a that goin’ around,” the deep voice remarks viciously. “i hate ta self deprecate, but, uh…i’m seeing a whole lotta empirical evidence that it _did_.” His sockets get long, but they’re not lazy. The points inside them seem to glow like coals, and you can’t quite tell what because he’s backlit by the window’s golden light, but… there’s something askew about the shape of his face.

“you got the golden ending _right here_, bucko.” He takes another step forward, tilts his skull just like Sans does when he’s pretending to like someone. “you tryin’ to say you don’t plan to _share_?”

“Who the fuck _are_ you?” you hear your own voice call out tight and strange. It doesn’t sound like you at all.

The short skeleton takes a few more broad, shuffling steps forward, the tall one keeping catlike pace slightly to the left and behind him like a bodyguard. They both get less backlit, emerging further into the cooly dim ambience of Snowdin. Now you can see what’s going on with his face.

The left bottom quadrant is smashed and sunken in, deep ridges starting at the chin and continuing right through the shattered, distorted grin. The edges of his sharklike teeth are fused together haphazardly, asymmetrical lines of darkness where they meet like stained glass panels sealed together with lead.

All the sharp shards are still an iridescent, living-bone white except one glinting triangle of worn yellow metal, slightly off center toward the left. It clashes with a big buckle made of silver bones that fastens the leather collar right underneath his smashed jaw, another bone depending from the center with a ring of some sort just...dangling there on his chest. The lights in his eyes are an arterial red, brighter than the almost purplish magic that seethes across his skull. He watches you take in his scars with a derisive scoff, lifting his chin defiantly.

The tall skeleton glares daggers at you, the points in his sockets a darker, cooler red than the rusty iridescence creeping across his broad cheekbones. Black, leather-like straps studded with more silver keep his clothing close to his body, outlining it in ways that make it clear nothing human is inside them.

He maintains his position relative to his companion as they near Papyrus’s fence of bone constructs… just like the row of silver bones that closes his ragged cape, the color of blood and ashes. Just like the bones that form his massive belt buckle, identical to the one on the shorter skeleton’s collar. They stand there at the fence side by side, both of them grinning now.

Your mind tries to reject it yet again, but you can’t ignore it anymore. Although his teeth come to neat points that fit together perfectly, and a raised white line pulls at his left socket, top and bottom…

You’re looking at an exact duplicate of Papyrus’s face.

Your eyes drop to the shorter skeleton’s malevolent expression as your mouth falls open; he doesn’t have as much flexibility in his mouth with the… the injury, but…

He grins like an anglerfish as a battered bone hand emerges to extend itself flagrantly out over the rows of constructs. He doesn’t even bother hiding the glint of something sharp and dangerous held between his metacarpals, jutting out from his palm to slash the bluish half-light with its malevolent intent.

“the name’s _sans_,” he practically giggles, his jarringly familiar voice emerging deep and throatless from somewhere inside that battered skull. “sans the skeleton.”

The points in his sockets flare out like sunspots; his words carve themselves like wounds in your reality even as he goes utterly motionless.

“don’t you know how to greet a new pal?”

Oh.

This is the other Sans.

The one who left the answer to the problem Sans couldn’t solve in the machine for him to find. The machine that, like Sans and Papyrus themselves…exist everywhere and everywhen. This is the golden ending he was talking about. Your timeline. The one he provided the key to, squirreled away in the one place he knew this Sans would find it.

The newly arrived Sans and Papyrus don’t seem all that assured of a warm welcome, and to be fair...they’re aren’t exactly getting one.

“Um, Sans?” you say faintly. “Was this a thing you knew could happen?”

“’s complicated,” Sans manages to rasp after an abnormally long amount of time.

The other Sans looks legitimately offended no one’s come up to try and spring a leak on his spiky handshake, and puts it back with a peevish huff. His ruddy eyes waver back into existence with an amused little tremble, though. What can be assumed to be his brother looks like he’s back on pause mode. The Sans and Papyrus _you_ know only get still like that when they’re…

Oh.

When they’re terrified.

“Hey,” you say quietly. “Um. We’re not going to-”

“you don’t know that,” Sans grunts next to you, voice low and rough enough to make you jump.

The other Sans darts his red eye lights at you, then back at Sans.

“you’re some _human’s_ bone-piece?” he says, some indefinable tension in his eerily familiar voice. His face falls into a derisive sneer that is unnervingly _un_familiar; he lets out a humorless bark of disbelief. “guess we both got a-”

“shut the fuck up,” Sans interrupts, and you frown at him. He’s acting weird, which…is perfectly understandable, you suppose. You study him carefully and come to a conclusion.

“I know you’re seeing something I can’t. What is it?” you whisper as quietly as you can. They can probably still hear you anyway, and Sans doesn’t bother trying to be quiet.

“they’re murderers,” Sans croaks blankly. “even killed people outside encounters…outside judgement.” The other Sans’s sockets narrow dangerously, but your Sans just looks...lost.

The other Papyrus comes off of pause mode abruptly, looks down at the other Sans with an expression that almost cracks your soul in half; you _see_ Papyrus in there for a split second as he looks to his brother for…guidance?

He’s afraid. Worse than that, he’s _unsure_.

An unsure and afraid Papyrus is…not good. Then he sees you watching him and the breach seals shut immediately, replaced by a smugly dismissive expression.

“IT SEEMS WE’VE COME TO A VERY JUDGMENTAL SORT OF UNIVERSE, BROTHER,” he says dryly, the glimpse of vulnerability gone as if it never existed. This is fucking terrifying.

“welp. guess we-”

The precursor-to-violence expression on the face of the other Sans flickers away along with his voice as Sans just…starts shuffling toward him like he’s sleepwalking. His nasal cavity is flared at the sides, hands already out of his pockets to brush aside the fence of his Papyrus’s constructs like dead leaves.

For him they’re not even that substantial, you imagine. Papyrus could never wish his brother harm, and you've put together over the years that some of his incredible control is due to Sans’s fragility.

Afterwards you’re not really sure how or why you all just let Sans walk over to an overtly hostile version of himself and stood there like fucking tree stumps, but you suppose you never really know how you’re going to react to something until it happens to _you_.

The strange, short skeleton with the shattered grin included.

You can see he knows what to do even less when Sans reaches out, pulls the other Sans’s left hand out of his jacket pocket and spreads the fingers against his own like he’s trying to see if it’s a match. As far as you can tell from here it is, except for a missing distal phalanx on the left pinky.

It’s weirder that there’s actually about an inch of height difference between them now that they’re together. It might just be the slippers versus sneakers, but even with the fairly thin sole differential in mind, this beat-up version of Sans really is slightly taller. Not only that, he’s also…fatter? Wider? He just seems a little more _solid_ in some difficult to categorize way.

Apparently whatever has come over Sans is contagious, because the other skeleton hesitantly touches Sans’s intact teeth like someone searching their own face for a potentially tender injury. Sans not only allows it, he tilts his head back and parts his teeth the slight amount he’s able so the other can look inside without tearing his own gaze away from their hands. When Sans finally pulls his eye lights up, he starts exploring the that broken smile with the same kind of hesitant care.

Like coming up from hypnosis, you finally realize Papyrus has your arm and has been leading you forward slowly, keeping your body positioned between you and the other…Papyrus? The tall one, who seems just as transfixed by the Sans-es weird behavior as you are. He’s not interfering, just watching with an uneasy expression.

You’re close enough to hear a distracted grunt come from the other Sans as Sans pulls away something from his mouth with two tiny fingertips. A tooth. The yellow metal tooth is removable; behind it is a jagged hole.

Oh. Whatever had happened to this Sans’s face… there hadn’t been quite enough pieces left to put them all back. Sans’s fingertip inserts itself into the hole lightly; another battered distal phalanx ends up between his own teeth as he tilts his head for a better view. You can see even more clearly close-up how this quadrant of his face is crushed in. The hole doesn’t look like it was intentional, but…that must be how he eats. It certainly looks like the inside of Sans’s mouth in there.

After seeing which of his fingers will fit into the hole (all of them), Sans tucks the tooth into the pocket of the other’s puffy jacket, then starts stroking his thumbs into the reddish, wound-like grooves beneath the sockets of the skull in front of him. He tilts and moves the skull between his hands around, ignoring the fact that this stranger’s just…kind of poignantly finger-banging his mouth now.

Holy _shit_, this is creepy.

You’re literally all just standing here watching them touch each other and….suck on each other’s fingers. Or whatever this fuck this is.

Finally, it’s Papyrus who has had enough.

“SANS… PLEASE STOP,” Papyrus says weakly, doing his best to remove his brother’s hands from where they’re now just caressing the crumpled mandible of his...clone? Alternate self? Over and over.

“paps…” he whispers, but he lets his brother take his hands away from their shaky, strange journey over the face that is and isn’t his.

“…it’s _yours_.”

You have no idea what the fuck he’s talking about. Papyrus doesn’t seem to either, just stands there holding his brother’s hands like he forgot what they are, staring at the other Sans’s face.

He goes perfectly still.

Papyrus drops his brother’s hands like hot coals. You start as his sockets flare sharp and sudden around black points at his not-brother’s ridged jaw; Sans’s fingers fall to dangle limply.

Papyrus puts his hand out to this Sans’s crumpled face, curls his fingers and _grabs__ it _cruelly like… like he’s…

It fits perfectly.

A handprint sunken into bone as if it were clay, impossibly long phalanges gripping a mouthful of shattered teeth. The tip of Papyrus’s middle phalanx fits unmistakably into the hole behind the tooth Sans removed, like a key in a lock even through the thin material of his gloves.

_Papyrus’s_ handprint, crushed permanently into his brother’s fixed grin as if he tried to tear it off his face.

Good lord.

“hands off the merchandise, buddy,” the Sans says roughly, coming out of his trance to yank his face away hard, taking an unsteady few steps back. His hand jabs into his pocket, then up to his face to replace the tooth. There’s a faint little click as he turns it.

He steps behind his brother, whose personal space Papyrus is now purposefully invading.

“WHAT. DID YOU _DO_ TO HIM.”

That… actually doesn’t sound like a question. You’ve never seen more able to see Papyrus’s black eye lights. Never heard him sound _dangerous_ before.

The other Papyrus scoffs derisively.

“NOTHING HE DIDN’T DESERVE.”

He grins a challenge with a mouthful of razorblades, oxblood eyes hot with despair.

“_boss_,” his brother barks tightly, a sudden warning in his voice. Oh fuck. Is that...what this Sans calls him? His _brother?_ “boss, don’t-”

It’s too late.

The space darkens, and everyone else gets pushed out of the dimension that Papyrus…._your_ Papyrus… just opened up.

Both Sanses stagger back along with you; cursing softly in disbelief that they aren’t allowed.

Only Papyrus allowed, apparently.

And holy shit, they are _really_ going at it.

Blurring, whirring flashes are happening inside, opaque white light filling the space for a split second here and there. There’s a constant grating, grinding sound you’ve never heard in your life… it almost sounds like this other Papyrus’s voice, but it’s not. They’re both silent.

It’s the double ended whirlwind of razor-edged shit hitting fans in there.

The other Sans looks like he’s watching a car crash, frozen in horror and indecision. One of his hands comes out of his pocket and drifts out towards them; you see it shake faintly.

Sans makes a strange, choked noise as his hands come up toward his face. He takes a step towards the encounter, then another.

Both Sanses exist everywhere. Despite their brothers’ obvious insistence that they do not, it can be assumed they both can become the selves that already exist inside that encounter. A shortcut.

Then, of all the fucking people and out of fucking nowhere, _Frisk_ runs up faster than you had any clue they were capable of moving, scoops Sans up and crushes him to their chest, both facing towards the terrifying and barely-visible encounter happening in another dimension right in front of you. You can see Frisk’s fingers around Sans’s bare wrist, pale-knuckled and shaky.

“let. go.” It’s a panted growl. You can hear his teeth.

Frisk doesn’t. Sans kicks wildly, one of his slippers flying off into the darkness.

**L e t. G o.**

The flashes just look like a glow at this point, and the Papyruses are moving faster than you can see, too. It sounds like someone threw ten moose skeletons into a fucking wood chipper in there. You wonder why Sans doesn’t just teleport if he wants away from Frisk or in there so bad, but….oh. Frisk is touching his bones, and that means they go _with_. And if Frisk went in _there_… yeah, they’d end up hamburger pretty quick. So might Sans, but he apparently doesn’t care as much about that. Sans isn’t weak, but Frisk is human, and moderately huge.

Shit. Frisk is taking themself hostage, and the only way Sans has to stun Frisk hard enough to let go…same problem, and these two new skeletons might end up melting or dusting or whatever the hell would happen to them if all of Sans’s voices were unleashed at once right now. Even you can’t escape Sans’s voices entirely unscathed, and besides...he needs his hands for that. It’s kind of a ‘let it happen’ or ‘kill em all’ type of situation, and Frisk apparently knows which option smart money bets Sans will go with under those circumstances.

As suddenly as it began, it ends.

When the bluish light of Snowdin returns to their space, the Papyrus swaying on his knees is wearing black, and the parted teeth he’s panting painful-sounding breaths through are sharply pointed.

Papyrus’s hands are bare, and running very slowly over the other’s upturned face and cervical vertebrae. The other Sans lurches toward them immediately, but stops on a dime at his brother’s outflung hand even though it looks like it might kill him to stay back. He makes a strange little grunt and shakes until the buckle on his collar jangles, but he stays back.

Papyrus finishes whatever he’s doing (healing? Comforting? It’s not clear), and his counterpart stands slowly. They stare at each other for a long moment, and you notice that your Papyrus is actually slightly taller than the new one. Your good and cool friend is still the world’s tallest living skeleton.

Still himself, despite the circumstances.

“I DON’T FORGIVE YOU,” Papyrus says tightly, and something about his choice of words chills you to the bone.

...ha.

It’s not actually funny.

“I WOULD BE DISAPPOINTED IN MYSELF IF YOU HAD,” the other replies. The knees of his pants are a little dirty from the ground, but otherwise neither of them seem the worse for wear. At least not after whatever Papyrus had done. “AND YET.”

“THIS ISN’T THAT KIND OF PLACE,” Papyrus says, a little bit of the dry-bright tone you’re more accustomed to hearing there coming back into his harsh caw. “HOWEVER.”

Another long beat of silence, and they turn their backs on each other as suddenly and crisply as if this were some old-fashioned duel.

The other Papyrus is next to his brother in two impossibly long strides; Papyrus does the same toward Frisk. You don’t see what happens exactly, but Papyrus walks right past them and when he does he’s holding his brother in his arms. Frisk looks so baffled to no longer be the one holding Sans you let out a short bark of hysterical laughter.

Both sets of brothers have their heads together; yours are hissing and crackling in that tonal language they speak. You can hear Sans’s low, steady rumble coming from the other pair, but you can’t make anything out. It gives you a strange, bad feeling in your stomach; it’s been a long time since you heard Sans’s voice without his soul behind it, so you can understand him no matter what. It...hurts? The other Papyrus is crouching, unnaturally still once again as he listens to whatever his brother is telling him. The other Sans’s arm is around him, and the bulk of his puffy coat and ratty fake-fur hood block their faces from view.

“What the fuck is going on?” you gesture at Frisk. You try to focus on them instead of how badly Papyrus is shaking all over, the rattle of bones muffled by his undergarments and his face hidden against his brother. It looks like Sans is soothing him. _Why_? Didn’t he _win_? Isn’t this-

You jump when Frisk touches you.

“Are you okay?” they ask hesitantly.

“Not particularly,” you whisper. They can read your lips just fine. And the last time you saw them was at the observance of the fifteenth anniversary of the barrier falling, which is still today.

It feels like every bit of that idyllic scene was months ago.

“Did you know this was going to happen?” you ask Frisk desperately.

They shake their head quickly; only now do you notice their face has gone that weird yellow color that happens when they’re injured or badly frightened. It’s hard to tell in this light.

“I can get a lot of places Underground almost as fast as Sans,” they confess absently, then jump when the other Papyrus suddenly stands again and starts yelling. “This was the first place I checked.”

Frisk stares at the other pair of brothers, the new ones. “I knew there...I knew Sans believed there were other Sans-es,” Frisk says, even though their eyes aren’t on you. “I didn’t think…he meant like _this_.”

You briefly consider telling Frisk this is the Sans who figured out the expiration date on their godlike time travel powers, then discard the notion just as quickly. Before you have a change to say much of anything else, Sans is wriggling out of his brother’s arms and shuffling over to you and with a neutral expression.

“time to take off, kiddo. ‘m gonna deal with it.” He doesn’t ask why Frisk grabbed him, or why they even came here in the first place. How they knew something was happening. As always, there’s a lot going on there under the surface.

Frisk’s face does the narrowed-eyes thing, but then they seem to see something in Sans even you can’t pick up on. Frisk might be an adult now- hell, they’re a _parent_ now…but this still has the air of getting the children away to safety. You’re twice Frisk’s age, but you half wonder if you should be leaving with them. You glance at Sans; the tension at the edges of his fixed grin make your decision for you.

You’re not going anywhere.

Frisk and Sans stare at each other for a long, fraught minute, but in the end Frisk nods tightly.

Without another word, they turn and walk away down the main drag of the town. It’s not long before they hook a sharp right and disappear into the trees.

“THE RIVERPERSON?” Papyrus asks, and Sans nods lazily. You can tell he’s still watching the other pair of skeletons like a hawk, even though he’s looking at his own brother with half-open sockets. Sans always knows exactly where everything is, as long as he’s paying attention.

“Who’s the River Person?” You’ve never heard of them.

Sans exhales slowly. “we don’t, uh.” He glances at his brother, who angles his sockets upward briefly, arms crossed. “...get along.”

You’ve all been strenuously not listening to the other Papyrus criticizing his brother, since most of it’s about tying his shoelaces or wiping “that look” off his face before he removes it for him. You all flinch a little when he says that last part, but… It’s like a really harsh version of what your Papyrus and Sans already do; similar enough to break your heart, different enough to grate the edges.

Sans is the first to sigh and start shuffling back over to them. In the absence of other cues, you and Papyrus decide to follow him.

Apparently we’re all on speaking terms after whatever the Papyruses had…discussed. You might be out of the loop, but you’re also out of your depth.

You’re trying very hard not to think about the fact that all four of these skeletons seem like they’re pretty out of their depth as well.

“this some kinda pleasure cruise, or-” Sans cuts off when the other Sans’s eyes flicker hard with legitimate surprise.

He knows something Sans doesn’t.

“nah,” he says quietly, an unpleasant hiss at the edges of his low rumble. “cut ourselves a one way ticket.”

A dark looks flits over Sans’s face faster that you can really process; the next thing you hear is the cloth-muffled slap of bone on bone.

He’s gripping Sans’s wrist, the unmarred phalanges a good several inches away from the ring on his leather collar. Sans had apparently decided to live up to his old Snowdin nickname, which is also...uncharacteristic of him. He’s not usually the grabby type.

“wouldn’t do that ‘f i were you,” the red-eyed Sans drawls, then winks. “pretty tempting though, eh?”

Sans doesn’t respond in any fashion you can see, but that smashed grin sharpens impossibly further as he lets Sans’s arm go. Sans puts his hand in his pocket; it emerges with an oversized novelty pencil. The bloody flare of the other Sans’s eyes grows opaque with amused malice as Sans pokes the pencil into the ring (jabbing his sternum in the process); there’s a metallic snap, and the severed end of the pencil falls to the ground harmlessly.

“the grill might be busted, but my bite’s still worse than my bark,” he giggles.

Sans arches an orbital at him, returns the freshly circumcised pencil to his pocket (and presumably the dimensional box in his phone from whence it had sprung). “guess that automatically makes captain hook your worst nightmare.”

There’s a dry skeleton snort.“comes right off if y’happen to keep yer fingers long enough to give it a lil _tug_,” he sneers, but there’s something softer behind it. “the boss does good work, huh?”

The ring on his collar does make a tempting target… and that’s the whole reason it’s there at all, you realize. To distract someone from grabbing the collar itself, to give Sans time to get the hell away. All those big, loose clothes to minimize the likelihood they can get to his bones, since touching them would bring them along if he takes a shortcut.

Presumably for the same reason Papyrus’s clothes are not only tight against his body, they look…_slick_. The straps don’t look like they’d give anyone something to hook a claw under, and you have a feeling that little cape-scarf’s clasp has some unpleasant surprises in it as well. Probably the same breakaway mechanism too, in case someone tugs the cloth.

“Where did you come from?” you ask, a little surprised to hear your own voice. You’ve been quiet...but to be fair, this many skeletons at once make everything else very, very loud.

“ELSEWHERE,” The other Papyrus intones pompously, before his brother can answer.

“Elsewhere?” You look at the new Sans expectantly. “Is that what you’re going with, too? Are you allowed to come up with your own answer?”

The crimson points in his sockets flare with incongruous rage, then comb your body up and down suggestively.

“_bossy_, huh? that how you got shortstack here screamin’ on your cock in the first place? must be somethin’ ta write home about if it keeps ‘im around…think i could get a sneak peek?”

Your face feels cold, then burns hot. No monster’s ever made assumptions about your downstairs business, or...said _anything_ like that to you. With humans your back would be up already anyhow, but… Hearing those words in that voice hit you a lot harder than you would have thought; you didn’t expect that degree of crudeness, or the jarringly unpleasant way he framed it. Then your face gets even hotter because you’re pissed this fucker got to you so easy.

“THAT IS ENOUGH, BROTHER,” the world’s second-tallest living skeleton grates precisely.

The other Sans ignores him; he must have seen some of what was going on behind your face on the surface of it, because his grin sharpens maliciously.

“might be a better idea to keep anything uglier than your teeth behind ‘em, red,” Sans puts in mildly, but a wave of the chill you feel when Sans is not-okay washes out from him so strong you shiver. Behind the mocking nickname and casual insult is something extremely unpleasant. You finally notice you’re doing the thing where you get quiet and start up an internal monologue because you can’t deal, and the realization makes you even less able to deal.

You’re not the sort to just sit there and take being harassed, even if it is from your significant other of four years’s interdimensional self. (Which, come to think of it, is a big part of the problem. The part of you that learned to trust Sans the hard way doesn’t seem to be getting the memo that although this _is_ Sans, it also _isn’t_.)

“ohh, my mistake,” the red-eyed Sans continues recklessly, mock sympathy in the shape of his sockets as he leers pointedly at your not-exactly-small hands. “i must be really makin’ a lousy _fist_ impression, but ‘m not exactly up to date on pickup lines for _humans_. guess we can’t all be sans, huh?”

He busts a nonexistent gut at his own joke; his brother shakes his head in obvious frustration, despite the painful-looking tension in his shoulders.

“YES, UNFORTUNATELY SOME OF US HAVE THE CONGENITAL MISFORTUNE TO BE _RELATED_ TO ONE. I _SAID_, THAT IS _ENOUGH_.”

Sans’s eyes have shrunk and dimmed to the point of going out, but it appears the other Sans doesn’t give a fuck. He huffs air through his jagged saw of a mouth like he smells blood in the water, then spreads his legs apart and hooks his thumb in his waistband. He takes a bold step away from his brother, followed by another to swagger right into your personal space.

He reaches out with the hand not already halfway down his pants.

“ohhh, _i_ get it. s’only fair if i--”

The other Papyrus’s hand darts out so suddenly you flinch back; Sans and Papyrus go motionless instantly in surprise.

All he’s done is reach for the back of his brother’s neck, who’s gone still as the skeletons flanking you. You have an unobstructed view of those fiery eyes dimming like banked coals from where he’s gotten up close and personal; as you watch they fade to small, nearly translucent carmine points. A shining point of light slides along the buckle without a sound, and you realize the other Papyrus’s grip is slowly tightening his brother’s collar. As it does, the leering expression disappears and that half-crushed face goes oddly smooth.

The other Papyrus’s pointed teeth are shut tight as a bear trap when he speaks; the unholy shriek of a bonesaw is compressed into a near-whisper.

“**B E H A V E****.**”

It’s not a question.

Papyrus snatches up his own brother and hauls him back from that already inescapable voice. Oh, he’s got you too, and you backpedal away obediently until you’re about fifteen feet from them. Actually… oh, you’re up against the wall of their old house now. Papyrus helps you sit down, and then he gives you Sans to hold in front of you. Sans’s face has that strange smoothness as well, and you wrap your arms around him, rub your cheek on the top of his skull.

“WILL YOU STAY HERE UNTIL I GET BACK?” Papyrus says, then flinches when you nod eagerly. You have absolutely no desire to do anything else.

“you got it, bro,” Sans says from where he’s been put.

You watch him stride back like he’s not looking forward to arriving. The other Papyrus looks pretty concerned, but he’s also signing at his brother rapidly. The other Sans is nodding, because he probably can’t not.

“didn’t know paps toldja bout his voice,” Sans says quietly. He says _voice_, but what he means is a little different. The method of communication they’re named after; their font. “never heard ‘im sound like that, though. not...for a long time. hits a lot harder than i thought it would.”

“Me and Papyrus talk about things sometimes.” You give him a little squeeze, then just hold him like it was implied you should. And you wait, too. Wait until Papyrus comes back. “Are you okay?”

“nope,” he answers shortly.

“Me neither,” you admit. Might as well talk about your feelings during your shared, involuntary little interlude. “All that stuff he said really hurt my feelings, and I don’t know why. I'm used to assholes like that.”

“’s ‘cause he’s _me_,” Sans whispers, face still smooth but shame and regret weighting his carefully restrained words. “my...voice. sorry. i dunno what to do.”

“Do you hate him?” The other him. The other Sans. He’s talked about them before, always said he hated them. And here you’d always thought they were more ideas than anything else. But instead he’s right here and…he’s pretty awful so far.

“i wanna kill him,” Sans admits quietly, and the fact that he’s telling the unadorned truth settles like a bowling ball in your stomach. The Sans in your arms has never killed anyone, but he feels the several hundred or so times some other Sans killed Frisk quite keenly. Considering he and Toriel (and Papyrus) raised them to adulthood, became their parents...it’s not exactly a good feeling.

(Even considering how many times Frisk tried to kill Sans while they were growing up. The Sans that’s left over from that is the one in your arms, too.)

You hold him close while he shivers with rage and disgust.

“Don’t,” you beg softly.

“can’t make any promises, darlin’,” he whispers.

Papyrus arrives at his destination, and his counterpart stands. His chin lifts slightly, and his face gives away almost nothing.

“I DON’T EXPECT YOU TO KNOW EVERYTHING RIGHT AWAY,” Papyrus says in clipped tones. “BUT I WILL ASK YOU NOT TO _EVER_ DO THAT AGAIN. UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. FOR ANY REASON.”

The other Papyrus finally looks over and you and Sans huddled together against the house, obediently awaiting Papyrus’s return. The other Sans just stands there with that smooth-faced expression, waiting quietly for his brother to handle things.

Sans stirs in your arms, but you hold him. You wait for Papyrus to come back.

“I’m sorry,” you say to Sans softly while the other Papyrus thinks about his options. “Is this okay?”

“mmhmm,” he replies evenly. “s’not like you can help it anyhow. me n him jus’...practice a lot. in case something ever happened.” He huffs softly. “not like this, i mean. in case he got scared, made a mistake.”

“I SEE.” The other Papyrus moves as if to approach the two of you, but Papyrus shifts his weight subtly and he stops, narrowing his sockets at you and Sans. “THAT IS ALSO… DIFFERENT. THAN I EXPECTED.”

“He didn’t know that would do this to us,” you narrate to Sans. “Does it…wear off?”

“’m not sure,” Sans says slowly, like he’s choosing his words very carefully. “’m tryin’ to remember how it went when paps was little, but…” Sans has a hard time remembering Papyrus's extreme childhood. For reasons.

“He’s a pretty sharp cookie,” you say admiringly. “It probably didn’t take him all that long to figure out what was happening.”

“mm,” Sans says. “yeah. my bro’s the coolest.”

“IT...SEEMS THAT MANY THINGS YOU MIGHT BE USED TO WON’T WORK THE WAY YOU’RE USED TO HERE,” Papyrus tells his counterpart judiciously. Then he sighs, making it rude. Ahh...the rudeness makes you not want to listen to him. But you continue to hold Sans and wait until Papyrus returns. He doesn’t yet; he's still speaking to the additional instance of himself. “IF YOU’RE...REALLY JUST GOING TO _BE_ HERE, I ASK THAT YOU STAY CLOSE UNTIL WE CAN FIGURE OUT WHAT THE CONSEQUENCES WILL BE.”

“I always thought something like this would be…scarier?” you comment to Sans. “Instead I just feel like always, except...I don’t...I just don’t want to.”

You don’t want to do anything except wait here until Papyrus comes back.

“yeah,” Sans agrees. “think i could shake it, but...”

You sigh regretfully. It might upset you if he got up. Not enough to really try and stop him, but…

“I’m sorry,” you say again. Your eyes get wet when he gives you a little squeeze, reminding you he’s hugging you back.

“s’okay, darlin’,” he says again. “i trust paps, too. i’ll go with what he decides.”

“For now,” you add, speaking his silent caveat aloud for him. Papyrus certainly won’t kill them, and Sans…even if he hates himself, it’s not likely he could ever harm any version of Papyrus. The idea makes you shiver instead of being as reassuring as it should be.

“yeah,” he whispers softly. His hand’s been rummaging in his pocket on and off this whole time, probably sending and receiving messages. Things being put into motion, information being sent and received. You’re sure Alphys, Grillby, Asgore, Toriel, and maybe even Frisk have all been given a side of the story.

“I CAN’T PROMISE MY BROTHER WON’T CAUSE HARM OTHERWISE.” The other Papyrus takes a deep breath, lets his face grow hard and cold. “AND I DON’T SEE WHY WE SHOULD-”

“aww, c’mon boss. was jus’ havin’ a little _fun_ with em.” The other Sans’s face is still smooth, but his red eyes glint with defiant malice. "i heard humans got real thick skin."

To your surprise, the leather-clad Papyrus slumps. His face goes from haughty to almost...pleading?

“boss-”

“MY BROTHER NEEDS TO EAT,” he says, an edge of desperation entering his harsh, grating voice. “I CAN’T-”

His teeth snap shut when Papyrus immediately produces a bottle of ketchup out of his phone in one smooth flourish.

The other Sans steps in front of his brother, not quite managing anger. He’s _trying_ to behave, and he obviously wants to, but apparently Papyrus is making that extraordinarily difficult, even with the…reinforcement. He stares up at Papyrus, and the situation gets very tense for a long beat of silence.

Then he suddenly snatches the ketchup away, fills Papyrus’s large hand with coin, and shuffles back with the bottle tipped at the hole in his smile and making a low, angry noise of disgust.

Wow. You hadn’t even noticed him removing the tooth.

Papyrus stares at the coins in his palm for a long, silent few seconds, then puts it away. He starts producing various food items from his phone, including a few things you wouldn’t have suspected he’d carry around with him. Cinnamon bunnies, a jar of snips’n’snails filling, and a bag of that stuff you’d found out later are pressed leaves formed into thick sheets. A few more bottles with unknown contents.

None of them are spaghetti.

But you’re _underground_; everything here is almost certainly entirely made of magic. Sans had told you how it worked a long time ago, how monsters can eat trash, dirt, or prepared foods with equal net gain, minus the intent (and flavor) cooking lends. Therefore..._everything_ should be edible, and you’re not sure why they don’t just grab whatever’s in front of them and eat it if they’re hungry.

Then again, they look like wherever they came from isn’t the kind of place where you want to let your guard down, or trust that everything is exactly what it seems. So they’d...bought?...food from Papyrus as a last resort, even though they may not entirely trust him. Even the one who _is_ him. Which kind of says a lot about their outlook and their situation.

“How did they get like that?” you whispers softly to Sans. He’s playing with your fingers, since that’s what you and he often do when you need mutual soothing.

“dunno,” he sighs.

“Do you know why their eyes are like that?”

“yep,” he answers shortly. “sort of.” No further explanation follows.

Papyrus sets the food items on the ground in front of the new arrivals, then turns his back on them and walks back to where you and Sans continue to huddle and wait for his return. He hunkers his skeleton butt down on his heels, situating his broad shoulders between you and the other set of brothers, handily blocking your view of them.

“CAN I TOUCH YOU, SANS?”

“’course.”

Papyrus pulls off a glove and rasps his fingers over his brother's skull. Sans smiles up at him agreeably, the last of that strange smoothness falling away from his features.

“WILL YOU BEHAVE, SANS?”

One of his sockets slides shut; Papyrus lets out a quiet exhale of relief.

“’course i will.” His mittened hand emerges from his hoodie pocket and offers itself. When Papyrus takes it to help him up, there’s a loud, wet-sounding fart noise. Papyrus ignores it and helps Sans to his feet anyhow; then he turns his attention to you.

He holds out his bare hand wordlessly, and you study its elongated bones before taking it with purpose into your own.

Papyrus’s bones are considerably more continuous with his soul than even most monsters’ bodies are, and that’s saying something. He wears a complex undergarment over them because even a casual touch is invasive; you can feel what he feels and vice versa, to a certain degree. Like touching souls, touching Papyrus’s bones is a form of communication.

He helps you understand that the reason this happened is because you trust him; trust that has been built carefully over the course of years. And he has never once spoken to you the way the Papyrus who just showed up out of nowhere had done. Despite the widespread effect, he’d only intended to calm his brother (who apparently has little enough control over his own behavior to occasionally...need that?), but you and Sans had been caught up in the edge of it, enough to make you both very interested in _behaving_ according to Papyrus’s wishes.

The problem is that the Papyrus you _trust_ is _this_ Papyrus, but the other Papyrus is...still Papyrus.

There’s something unpleasant and murky attached to that, and Papyrus takes his bones back hastily.

“ARE YOU...OKAY?” he caws, tension apparent in his voice.

“Um,” you answer, blinking and thinking. Then you stand, and he leans back and stands up as well to give you space. “Yeah, I think I…?” You look into his eyes carefully; you can just barely make out the small black points in his black sockets, a barely-there haze of orange-blue limning their tense boundaries.

“I flew a paper plane into Toriel’s titties,” you lie speculatively, and he blinks his sockets at you, an unwilling grin tugging at the joins of his long, thin mandible.

“DULY NOTED,” he says with a dramatic angled-socket eyeroll impression, then turns to his brother. “WELL. WE CAN’T JUST LET THEM...WANDER AROUND UNSUPERVISED.” You peek around Papyrus’s body; the other two are just standing there staring at you right back, waiting. The food items are nowhere in evidence, presumably consumed or otherwise squirreled away.

Sans lets out a slow, tight sigh, and you look back at him.

“he’s _me_, paps. can’t exactly keep em locked in the coolshed if they don’t wanna be there.”

“WHA-NO, SANS, I MEANT…” Papyrus shuts his teeth with a click, then starts over. “I…DON’T THINK THEY ARE QUITE UP TO _MINGLING_…RIGHT AWAY?” Papyrus makes a skeleton throatclearing noise, which is considerably drier than when people with throats do it. “UNTIL. THEY HAVE PASSED SEVERAL REMEDIAL ETIQUETTE COURSES THAT I WILL BE INVENTING SHORTLY.”

“kinda see what you mean, bro,” Sans says after a long beat of silence. He exhales heavily, hands moving unseen and unacknowledged in his pockets. Whatever they have to say, Sans would rather they kept it to themselves. “figured we’d have to put em up anyhow.”

Papyrus’s teeth part unhappily.

“I KNOW, BUT…BESIDES UP, _WHERE_ ARE WE GOING TO PUT THEM?”

Sans sighs again; he looks exhausted.

He looks his age.

“grillbz already said he’d take em.”

Papyrus’s teeth hang open even further as his sockets narrow, then two phalanges come up to rub between his sockets so rapidly you can hear a zip-zip noise of his knobbly knuckles even through the gloves.

“...OF _COURSE_ HE DID.” His hand comes down, and his stressed expression’s eased up a bit. “ACTUALLY, IT’S NOT THE WORST IDEA YOU’VE HAD. IF ANYTHING ELSE HAPPENS, IT’S THE BEST PLACE FOR…MANAGING. THAT SORT OF THING.”

“Is this what the machine’s for? It...works?”

Sans looks very unhappy. He doesn’t look over his shoulder at his additional iteration of self trying to stare holes in the back of his skull. “guess so.”

“You can’t put them back where they came from?”

“...heh.” Sans closes his sockets, then opens them halfway. His expression’s all lazy calm, but the points in his sockets are bright white and hard. “dunno if they can put themselves back where they came from either.” The corners of his fixed grin twitch irritably. “or maybe they jus’ don’t wanna.”

“Are we like...adopting them?”

“no.”

“NO.”

“Okay. So…we’re going to Grillby’s?”

You’re still looking at the other Sans, and his face does something weird when you say that.

“barrier’s really gone?” he calls hesitantly.

“We might as well go over there. This is kinda stupid,” you sigh, then just start walking. The skeleton brothers follow you reluctantly, but they still follow.

Sans stands slightly apart from everyone in a wide stance you know is...preparatory. But he just looks at them, the deep grooves beneath his sockets looking like they were carved into his face the hard way.

“’f we let you stay over at grillby’s, you promise to stay there?” he rumbles evenly.

The other Sans immediately narrows his eyes, but the other Papyrus interrupts quickly.

“YES. FOR NOW.” He looks at his brother, but doesn’t let anything show in his face except what you’re realizing is his default expression: haughty and smug, like he expects to be obeyed immediately if not sooner. “HE WON’T PROMISE. BUT...”

He looks at his other self imperiously, squaring his tense shoulders like a challenge.

“_I _PROMISE-”

“boss!” his brother barks, but it’s too late.

“-THAT MY BROTHER WILL STAY THERE.”

Red eye lights heat and spark off each other; the Sans growls wordlessly, but backs down and hunches up resentfully.

“FOR ONE WEEK. AT WHICH TIME WE WILL DISCUSS THE MATTER FURTHER.”

“i’m driving,” Sans insists calmly. “no scenic route today.” Then you all look around at each other, sort out there’s really only one way for that to work. The gloves come off, and each Papyrus takes their respective brother’s hand; you take a Sans hand in each of yours.

It’s actually… your breath goes uneven and shallow; this really is _two Sanses_, even though you can feel the difference, you _know it’s him_. A weird, animal panic wells up in you, almost like when Sans shortcuts while you’re watching. Speaking of which, you remember to slam them shut just in time.

Holding hands in a line like you’re about to start skipping down the fucking yellow brick road, you open your eyes after an especially intense lurch of dislocation and you’re all standing a few feet in front of Grillby’s.

You all let go at once, and Sans shuffles away down the sidewalk several feet instead of toward the door. He looks back over his shoulder and points his skull at a spot a little ways away. The pointier set of brothers follow him in a strange, hunched little shuffle of their own, glancing all around and up at the sky with flinching darts of their eyes. You expected them to be more afraid, but they're already so afraid you think they might just be at capacity.

You swallow a mouthful of nausea-borne spit, shiver and rub your arms even though it’s not all that cold out. Papyrus comes closer and puts an arm around you. It helps. You watch Sans explaining something to the Papyrus, who it seems like he’s sort of been avoiding talking to directly until now. He must have told a joke, because the world’s second-tallest living skeleton looks dumbfounded, the lets out a laugh that has none of the harshness his voice usually holds. Clear and almost chirping, it rings off the buildings opposite until the echo returns like a silver bell; like he doesn’t have a care in the world. Hell, it’s more innocent-sounding than Papyrus’s laugh, enough so that it takes you aback.

“It’s hard to believe he killed a bunch of people when he does that.” You glance up at Papyrus. “But I guess he must not be that good at it, since you-”

“HE IS… VERY. GOOD AT KILLING PEOPLE, ACTUALLY.”

“Oh.” You chew your lip. Papyrus’s face looks uncharacteristically hard as he stares at the other Papyrus’s back. Or maybe the fact that it doesn’t look hard all the time is the odd part, since it is made out of bone. And is literally a skull.

“HOWEVER. WHAT _WE_ WERE DOING WAS _NOT_ KILLING PEOPLE, AND I AM MUCH BETTER AT THAT.” He shudders. “NOT THAT IT...” His teeth remain parted, but the rest of that sentence stays inside.

“Papyrus,” you whisper. He looks down at you, an unaccustomed tension around his sockets as he angles them down at you. “Did you…um. Didn’t you win the encounter?”

Papyrus’s face goes perfectly smooth. It reminds you disturbingly of how the other Sans had looked when his brother had grabbed his collar.

“NO,” he replies in a flat tone you haven’t heard in a while. His sockets look strangely hollow, but they hold your gaze like a vice.

“NOBODY WON TODAY.”

You don’t ask him if he’s okay.

“Can I help?” you say instead, and that hardness softens considerably. You reach up for his hand where it rests on your shoulder, and he lets you take those impossibly long phalanges in your fingers and give them a little squeeze. They feel like felt-wrapped paintbrushes with too many knuckles.

“YES,” he says, and gives you a tired but sincere grin. He keeps ahold of your hand and starts walking forward, taking advantage of his impressive wingspan to preemptively get the door for you. When he opens it, a torrent of warmth and not-quiet flows out to wrap you both like a hug. The Sanses and other Papyrus fall in line behind you to enter, then spread out to flank as you all approach the bar together.

The inebriated bellow Lola reserves for speaking to people not currently at her table greets you all as you shuffle inside Grillby’s.

It’s not very crowded, since a lot of people are probably still at the underground celebration/mourning session of the fifteenth barrierfall anniversary, but...huh.

You’re _expecting_ the record scratch, the spit take, the glasses falling from shock-numbed fingers to shatter on the floor.

Instead everything just keeps exactly on like it’s been, other than a few regulars elbowing each other and putting their heads together like they just saw something worth gossiping about. After her slurred greeting, Lola doesn’t even bother turning her head to stare. Instead, she throws back what’s left in her glass and sets her head down on her folded arms for a nap.

You look at the two new arrivals, and they both look at Grillby like they’ve seen a ghost, and not in the monster sort of ghost way. The newly arrived, red-eyed Sans recovers first.

“You may Speak,” he gestures at Grillby, who flickers in surprise. Grillby does the fire equivalent of tilting his head, sets down the glass he’d been polishing right where it goes.

…_Oh. I…pardon me. I always thought you two were boss monsters. Hello, Sans and Papyrus. It’s nice to meet you._


	2. where everybody knows your name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _My funny vibe is hard to miss_   
_Your ignorance can't be called bliss_   
_I fucking wash my hands of this_
> 
> Anthrax – 1000 Points Of Hate  
https://youtu.be/iGmfton2VkQ
> 
> **[arguing/yelling, threats, alcohol/inebriation]**

“well, uh. we _are_ boss monsters, but...” Sans sighs at Grillby sheepishly, rasps phalanges over the top of his skull. “guess i shoulda sent a longer message.”

Surprisingly enough, the other Sans is awfully quiet. He looks to be half casing the place, half looking surreptitiously at the flaming bartender like he either owes Grillby money (unlikely) or like he did Grillby a bad turn at some point (always possible but considering they’ve never met, also unlikely).

“let’s go with Dog rules,” Sans concludes. “table 9 good?”

_...Yes. I’ll… stop by in a bit to take your orders._

Papyrus herds the jerks over toward the table indicated; Sans does a little tappy-tap-skitter with his fingers on the bar and exhales explosively.

“thanks, hot stuff. ‘ppreciate you putting yourself out.”

_...__Hardly_, Grillby retorts with a warm smile. He fiddles with the sound system controls, and some guitar pop song about eternally burning desire begins to play. The tension in Sans’s upper body melts closer towards his habitual slump, and he leans his elbows up on the counter with a much-softened grin.

“…heh. i was thinking about staying over if you’re up for it.”

Flames dance discreetly over those twitchy phalanges; Grillby flicker-nods. Then he looks at you hopefully. You blush, but you nod, too.

“What are Dog rules?” you ask to cover up your discomfiture.

“mm?” Sans looks over at you, one socket closed. “Dogs are kinda...in between. they’re all Dogs, but they’re different. ‘cept when they’re not.”

You move aside so Aaron, Aaron and Aaron can leave piles of money on the counter for the drinks they’d imbibed, chatting as they head out the door. It reminds you that Bob, Temmie professor and your colleague at Ebott University, is kind of an outcast because she has a name that isn’t Temmie. The same goes for Chell, the sexy Moldbygg from the bursar’s office. Well, the name’s just a nickname given by its human coworkers, but still. You’ve picked up on the fact that it has a job at all is kind of a no-no, culturally speaking. For monsters who aren’t boss monsters.

You look down at Sans, then past him to where Papyrus is indicating to Papyrus and Sans that they probably have sufficiently inspected Table 9 for hidden spike traps and can probably just sit down already. (He informs them of the non-hidden spike trap in the kitchen, and that they aren't allowed in there without Grillby’s permission. You’ve seen it yourself, as well as the corks individually affixed to each needle-sharp protrusion in accordance with monster law.)

Lesser Dog is playing Greater Dog at some complex card game at one of the back corner booths, and you consider that you can’t actually tell them apart half the time. Sans told you it had been easier when they’d habitually worn armor, although he’s got weird monster-sense cheat codes and has no trouble telling any instance of a monster from another. (You can tell some of them apart, like the instance of Vulkin who renders medical care to you versus the ones who don’t. But you’re not supposed to mention that.)

You can see how multiples of the same person showing up, even if it’s out of nowhere, would be less of a jarring experience for monsters than it might be for humans. More like fodder for monster gossip, which can get pretty vicious. Speaking of vicious…

“Hey, sugarbones.”

Sans turns his head on his folded arms to look up at you. He’s been playing handsy with Grillby in one of his trademark procrastination techniques while you’re doing your patented ‘lost in exposition’ technique. Same goal, though. Putting off an unpleasant conversation with the two toothy skeletons sulking at Table 9.

You’re a formidable couple, dammit.

“We should go take our turn babysitting.”

…_Try to keep the property damage to a minimum_, Grillby adds playfully, giving Sans’s hand a final pat-flicker. _…I’m saving up for Undyne’s next visit._

“can’t make any promises, hot stuff,” Sans grunts, lurching off the barstool in a simple, practiced flop that ends with him standing slumped on his slippered feet. You join hands and wander over at chronically ill and chronically lazy speeds to the Table of Destiny.

Papyrus stands so that you and Sans can slide into the booth seat, then sits back down with relatively restrained sidebutt-shoving to scoot his brother’s broad ass a little further down. Sans’s lack of cooperation is undermined by the slickness of the material his shorts are made out of, and with a final wiggle from Papyrus you’re packed like sardines. As the small yet bony momentum terminates at your hip, you let out a tiny hiss of pain that you didn’t think anyone could hear.

“got some serious pelvic air hockey skills there, bro,” Sans protests mildly.

“you want me to kiss it better?” the other Sans says at the same time.

“BROTHER, THAT’S DISGUSTING.”

“BROTHER, THAT’S DISGUSTING.”

The Papyri do a slow, annoyed socket-blink at each other. The Sans next to you sighs, expression perilously close to annoyance.

“ok, first thing. we gotta do something about the names.”

OtherSans Senpai narrows his sockets peevishly. “oh yeah? you pick yours out yet?”

“nope,” Sans replies evenly. “our turf. seniority based system, red.”

“oh, so i’m _red_ now, huh?” he leers at Sans, makes an unexpectedly suggestive noise. “guess that can go for everyone, then.” The pointy Papyrus looks mildly amused, or possibly nauseated. He’s a little hard to get a read on.

“Why is that sexual?” you ask the table at large; everyone gets iridescent at the same time; you snort. “It must be pretty bad, then.”

Red leers and leans in, makes a motion vaguely toward his chest. “well, if you’re _askin_-”

His brother grabs his hand and puts it back into his pocket for him.

“Alrighty,” you interject in lecture-hall-voice, then dampen the volume. “Um. Do you have a name you want to use, other-Papyrus?”

“IF HE’S _RED_, THAN THIS IS OBVIOUSLY _EDGE_,” Papyrus-you-know-and-love informs you all exasperatedly. He waves his hand, clad in a glove bearing a pattern slightly too large for such a small garment. If his boots were’s the same, you wouldn’t have known those were cartoon bones. “A LITTLE DIFFERENT THAN MOST, BUT I SUPPOSE I ALWAYS AM.”

A-little-different-than-most-Papyrus looks like he’s at a loss for words.

“THE VOICE, OF COURSE,” Papyrus adds impatiently. “ALTHOUGH I ADMIT YOU ARE SOMEWHAT ROUGH AROUND THEM AS WELL. BUT YOU SEEM MORE OF A _RED AND EDGE_ THAN A _SPIKE __AND FELL_, OR A EVEN A _CHERRY AND BOSS_.”

Papyrus huffs in exasperation when about<strike>-</strike>to-be-Edge looks like he’s going to argue.

“YOU DON’T EVEN CALL _EACH OTHER_ SANS AND PAPYRUS.”

“I CAN’T ARGUE WITH THAT,” he grates through his serrated smile; if you didn’t know Papyrus so well you wouldn’t have caught his flinch.

“hey, you didn’t tell me _cherry_ was a fuckin’ option,” Red snickers.

“ABSOLUTELY NOT,” his brother says flatly, “YOU ALREADY POP OFF QUITE ENOUGH.” Red chuckles, then simmers down. Sort of.

“Are you all named in pairs like that?” you ask in a thoughtless attempt to change the subject, and all four skeletons fall silent as the tomb. Not even Sans looks at you. Your face goes hot-cold when you think about the little twist of red cloth with a pinch of silvery dust inside Sans had showed you, one of the awful things he’d found years ago in the machine. Papyrus’s dust, hidden in there for an unfathomable reason by some other Sans.

(Sans still carries it around in his phone, granting the wish of his other self no matter how much it hates it.)

And of course _this_ is the Sans that had left the presumably very helpful scrap that had allowed Sans to calculate how long he’d have to wait before Frisk would no longer be able to RESET this timeline. Apparently his help had come with an unspoken price, and you’re all here to find out what exactly that’s going to be.

You clear your throat awkwardly.

“So, if you’re both Sans,” you say quietly, “and um. Papyrus. Why didn’t you end up getting annihilated once you got here? Isn’t that how it works?”

After all, that’s how Frisk had done what they did. RESET, at least, worked by pulling another timeline into this one and annihilating everything on a quantum level; the byproduct of that annihilation becoming time. Or something like that. You’re not a physicist, and you don’t really care to be.

“...eh. there was always the chance all of us’d get skullfucked into quarks,” Red answers cooly. “did the math, figured the whole shortcut thing’s a loophole, s’long’s we got some...” A socket slides shut. “…significant differences. looks like i’m two for two. you polishing up my trophy yet?”

“that why you didn’t bring anyone else with you?” Sans looks half-asleep, slid halfway down the slick red booth seat.

You shiver, and you’re not alone.

“…nah,” Red hisses under his breath. His brother’s face is carefully blank.

“He’s telling the truth,” you mumble, then jump when two sets of red points stab at you, outraged.

“what’s it to ya?” Red mumbles dangerously. Something about you obviously bothers him, which works out since it’s mutual.

“Hey, I’m defending you,” (you realize as you’re speaking you’re starting to use Sans logic), “so I’m not sure where all this hostility’s coming from. Has anyone ever told you you’re a remarkably unpleasant sort of dude?”

Red makes a humming sigh, pleased as someone who just smelled a fresh baked pie. “yeah,” he says with a little lilt.

“MOSTLY ME,” Edge adds.

“mmhmm,” Sans replies. “how’d you two get like that, anyhow?”

“LIKE WHAT?” Edge sets his chin on his lustrously black-gloved hand like a bony coquette and makes his eyes _redder_ somehow. Papyrus grunts in exasperation.

“WELL, _SOMETHING_ OBVIOUSLY WENT… ASKEW,” he caws rudely.

“something different happened,” Sans adds, ameliorating. You’re pretty sure it’s lost on the two across the table. “we’re jus’ curious what it was, is all.”

“for someone who’s supposed to be me, you’re dumber than a bag a rocks,” Red snorts. “you sit here askin me how my ~timeline’s different~ when i got no fuckin idea what it’s like _here_.”

“that so.” Sans tilts his skull back against the booth seat. “this’s all some big mystery to you? then how’d you figure out the lagrangian?”

“better question’s how come you _didn’t_?” Red’s eyes flare like coals, but only for a moment. He leans back in the seat and crosses his arms. “…heh. guess we both got some shit we’ll take to the grave, huh?” The corners of his smashed grin flatten, then come back sharper than before. “now you got me _curious_, too. how many of us didja have to eat to get yourself this far?” he asks, tilting his skull like a buzzard. “jus_t _wonderin_g_.”

Sans’s face doesn’t change. “’s a real interesting way to put it.”

“there some other way to put it?”

“Unhappened,” you interject with a shrug.

“that’s some real sweet alice in wonderland sounding shit,” Red remarks snidely, then shrugs as his expression becomes slightly less malicious. “guess that’s reason we came here, though.” You can barely hear the emphasis on the penultimate word, but it’s there.

“heh.” Sans’s expression would be perfectly amiable if it wasn’t for his eyes being slightly too small, a smidge too bright. “lemme guess. fattest and farthest?”

Red makes a double-click sound and points a finger gun at Sans.

You clear your throat at Sans. “Care to explain that, my dulcet darling?”

Red snorts, and has the audacity to answer you. “means this timeline’s the farthest i could get from mine, and it ate the most timelines around it.”

Sans exhales shakily.

“the machine doesn’t use _time_ to get when it’s going, does it.” It’s not a question, but Red still gives a mean little shrug away for free.

“how should _i_ know?” Red flickers his eyes, like Sans does when he’s pretending to bat eyelashes he doesn’t have. “’s broken, right?”

“How did you get it to work, then?” you ask, and Red and...Edge, you suppose, both go completely silent and expressionless, stare at Sans and Papyrus.

Nothing happens for what has to be three solid minutes.

“This round’s a draw, then,” you remark irritably.

“might not a been.” Sans being cryptic shouldn’t irritate you further, but it kind of does. “speaking a which, can’t help but notice you two got a real bad case a the dee tees.” Sans arches an orbital. “i’m guessing that’s not just dust withdrawals. not with the carpet matching the drapes.”

You don’t understand that at all, but Red chuckles.

“’m gettin’ the idea your asgore’s a lot different than ours. a real _softy_.”

“maybe, maybe not.” Sans looks unimpressed, and Red’s crushed mouth manages to twitch.

“…heh. well, you know bout chara, right?”

Sans’s skull inclines almost imperceptibly. You suppose shit’s getting real now. Red looks smug, but there’s something brittle underneath.

“asgore n toriel absorbed em.”

Well, that gets a response.

“what the fuck are you talking about?” Sans whispers, eyes small and hard in their narrowed sockets.

Red leans his elbows on the table, sets his ridged chin on his fists in mock flirtation. Sans does the same thing when he’s in a really bad mood. “gobbled em right up soon’s azzy dusted.”

“THAT’S GROSS,” Papyrus says flatly. “WAS IT AN ACCIDENT?”

Red shrugs. “wasn’t around for it.”

Papyrus has on an expression he usually reserves for finding Sans’s soaked socks in his oven. “WHAT...HAPPENED?”

“they both went nuts,” Red says with a shrug. “gotta imagine absorbing yer own dead kids’ll do that. anyhow, fluffybuns decided the best thing to do was to absorb more souls since half wasn’t cuttin’ it, get bigger n meaner than any human until he busted the barrier and unleashed hell on humanity. toriel jus’ took off, no one ever saw her again.”

Sans scoffs. “she was in the ruins.”

“yep.” Red doesn’t blink.

“ASGORE ABSORBED THE SOULS AS SOON AS HE GOT THEM?” Papyrus looks like he’s having a hard time imagining what that must have been like.

Red and Edge just stare at him blankly.

“HE SOUNDS LIKE THE SORT TO RUSH THINGS,” Papyrus adds slowly. “WHY DIDN’T HE JUST ABSORB THEM AND BREAK THE BARRIER?”

Edge goes still. “IT’S HARD TO ABSORB SOMETHING YOU DON’T HAVE.”

“what happened to the kids who fell?” Sans asks quietly.

Red and Edge sit like statues.

You have a bad feeling about what happened to those kids.

You make a decision.

**sans.**

**HP: ** **5**

**AT: 1**

*** ** **Close, but no cigar.**

**Papyrus**

**HP: 814**

**AT: 10**

*** ** **He l** **oves his brother.**

Crimson points in malevolent sockets try and drill holes through you.

“you really got a set, huh?” Red looks pretty cheesed you did that, but you just shrug.

“Baker’s dozen,” you deadpan. He actually snorts, then darts you a look like you tricked him somehow. His scowl returns when you turn to Sans and say, “He didn’t kill them, but he’s got five HP.”

“reason i got five hp is cause i got _lv_, snickerdoodle,” Red says bluntly. “asgore’s _other_ big idea, thinking maybe he didn’t wanna end humanity all on his lonesome. kill or be killed, make stronger monsters by putting all that physical stuff in fewer bodies. fewer monsters, stronger souls. add that on to the determination makin’ us all batshit crazy, an’ you got a recipe for something almost as strong ’s humans, according to him.”

“I’M BEGINNING TO NOTICE JUST HOW SUBPAR THAT PLAN WAS,” Edge says, his rusty eyes carding over your body unpleasantly.

“eh. you already knew that, boss, an’ good on ya.”

“YOUR EFFORTS ARE DULY NOTED, BROTHER, BUT I BELIEVE YOU CAN DIAL BACK THE _OVERT_ MINIONING FOR NOW,” Edge intones dryly, then tilts his head in consideration. “ALTHOUGH I WOULDN’T TURN DOWN A BIT OF GOBLIN-LIKE ANTICIPATORY CAPERING IF I BECOME MOVED TO EXPLAIN OUR NEFARIOUS PLAN TO THE BAR AT LARGE.”

The grooves under Red’s sockets nearly disappear as they flatten on the bottom; his expression looks close to soft as he chuckles heartily.

“good one, bro,” he mutters without taking his eyes off everyone else for even a moment. Well, it’s not as if he doesn’t know where his brother is at all times without needing to look.

You’ve been tracing over this new information in your mind over and over, trying to wring some kind of meaning out of it.

Witty banter is all well and good, but…

“Sans?” you say weakly.

“yeah, babe?”

“They’re…Chara?”

“yeah,” he says, short and husky. “all of em woulda been.” You manage to tear your eyes off Red and Edge, look to your side. Sans is still sunk down halfway in the booth seat, of course. You can feel one of his legs against you, folded out so he doesn’t accidentally play footsie with his double under the table. You assume his other leg’s bent out against Papyrus. His eyes are small and hard like cabochon diamonds in the endless darkness of his narrowed sockets. He doesn’t look away from Red, but you know that doesn’t mean he’s not looking at you.

“What does that _mean_? Like...how?”

“asgore n toriel being king and queen ain’t like human shit,” Sans reminds you. “when they do something big like that…something happens to em, it affects everyone.”

“AND THEY HAVE TO DO WHAT EVERYONE WANTS, AS LONG AS ENOUGH OF THEM WANT IT BADLY ENOUGH,” Papyrus adds.

Grillby comes out from behind the bar and approaches the Table of Destiny. Sans catches his eye, then pulls his hands out to sign.

“Five Smooth and Fries all Around,” his phalanges click and rasp quickly. Grillby stops, nods, and heads to the back.

“didn’t realize this was that kinda date,” Red comments snidely to no effect.

“anything for you, angel face,” Sans drawls, and Red looks more pissed off than you expected. Then Red just starts talking like it’s already the middle of some other conversation. Which is when you start consciously realizing these two new skeletons don’t really talk like the monsters you’re used to, because that’s the most monsterish thing they’ve done so far.

“maybe the rest of em are gonna collapse into _this_ one eventually,” he says like it’s nothing to him one way or the other. “guess we’ll see how many of us make the jump, huh? heh...” Sans gets still, and Red grins like an anglerfish. “what _i’m_ thinking is, it’s gonna turn into the biggest collider any of us ever saw…and you n me? we’re all up in the splash zone.”

He lets that sink in as he leans forward, trying to stare Sans down. It doesn’t work, but you’re not too sure he cares since he keeps at it as he continues. “me and you… heh, maybe me _or_ you… get to see who’s left standing.” He winks and holds out a bare hand, and you notice the bones look worse for wear in addition to the missing pinky distal. The marks resemble the one from Sans’s metatarsal mishap after the plaster bandage came off, except a few are dented in instead of raised. They must be scars.

“i got fifty riding on you; care ta book?”

Sans tilts his head wonderingly. “not even gonna bet on yourself, huh?”

“nah,” Red says, somehow managing to seem even more toothy. “i know better.”

He’s lying.

Sans ignores his battered hand until he puts it away.

“ANYWAYS!!” Papyrus hollers in his time-to-change-the-subject voice. “WE’VE ALL ACKNOWLEDGED THAT OUR DIFFERENCES RUN A BIT DEEPER THAN UNFORTUNATE FASHION CHOICES. WHY DON’T WE-”

Edge interrupts with a jarring laugh much different than the one from outside, makes an unnecessarily elaborate gesture towards the wine-colored points in his sockets. “IF YOU WERE GRACED WITH A SET OF BEDROOM EYES LIKE THESE AT THIS VERY MOMENT, HOW SOON WOULD _YOU_ BE WEARING LEATHER PANTS?”

Papyrus sighs. “BY YESTERDAY AT THE LATEST,” he admits reluctantly. “ALTHOUGH THEY COULD BE TIGHTER. IN FACT, I DON’T SEE THE POINT OF NOT SEWING YOURSELF INTO THEM. WHY BOTHER WITH THE BUTTONED FLY AT ALL? IT’S NOT LIKE WE HAVE TO GO TO THE BATHROOM, OR-”

Papyrus cuts off at Edge’s blatantly sexual leering.

“I NEVER THOUGHT I’D BE IN THE POSITION TO EXPLAIN TO MYSELF WHAT A COCK IS,” Edge grates cockily, “BUT PERHAPS WE CAN WORK THAT INTO THE ETIQUETTE COURSES AS EXTRA CREDIT.”

“WOWIE,” Papyrus replies, his expression arranging itself into the shining mirror of his integrity. Edge’s unexpectedly brittle smugness cracks down the middle. “ARE YOU SINGLE? BECAUSE I BELIEVE YOU HAVE A TORRID _ASS_IGNATION LINED UP WITH YOU AND _UMPTION_.”

Edge looks at you, then Papyrus. You catch a glimpse of the endless, directionless fear seething around the points in his sockets, blood against rust as he realizes that Papyrus knows very well what a cock is, and possibly even what it’s for. That Papyrus might even have experience with certain _other_ aspects of himself that Edge…

doesn’t.

Edge’s face seals shut once more as he looks at you and realizes an inconvenient truth. You know what his soul looks like, because you’ve seen Papyrus’s soul. Not for sexy reasons or anything, but no matter how much you call him ‘Edge’ he’s still an iteration of Papyrus.

“Hypocrisy's a bitch, huh?” you add a little meanly. “I guess it takes one to _know_ one.”

“’m cool with a subject change whenever,” Sans drones.

“…_WELL_,” Edge chokes, the grating screech crawling back in to his voice for a minute before he smooths it back out with brute force. “THIS LITTLE ADVENTURE IS FULL OF UNPLEASANT SURPRISES FOR EVERYONE. ISN’T. IT.”

“kinda weird how you decided to have this little adventure at all,” Sans remarks as if cardboard wouldn’t melt in his mouth. “somebody-”

“We keep talking about _how_, but _w__hy_ are you here?” you ask flatly.

They all stare at you.

“SIGH,” Papyrus sighs. “THEY’RE OBVIOUSLY REFUGEES.”

Neither of the newbies react except for the points in their sockets looking a little more red for a second.

“decided you were too good to get _skullfucked inta quarks_, huh?” Sans says languidly. White eye lights flick at you for a brief moment. “bet their timeline went belly up.” A barely there huff as he looks back at Red and Edge. “decided to stow away instead a going down with the ship.”

“Umm.” You blink rapidly. “It doesn’t really seem like-”

Red fixes you with a look that makes your breath feel like it just went solid in your lungs.  
“you keep talking bout us like we’re not here, might tempt me to find out-”

“don’t think you should be in too much of a hurry to finish that thought, buddo,” Sans says, deep voice emerging mellowly from his fixed grin. “’m getting kinda tired a that lil song n dance.” A wave of not-okay washes out from him that’s so cold it makes you shiver and grunt. You don’t see Red’s reaction since you’re too busy trying not to jump up and run away from the suddenly violent atmosphere, but in the end he doesn’t bother finishing the sentence at all.

You clear your throat.

“It doesn’t seem like the place you came from is all that...safe,” you try, addressing the Papyrus who seems willing enough to accept the moniker ‘Edge’ for now.

“you gonna tell me how you made it work?” Sans asks before you can continue.

“nope,” Red answers just as quickly. “you don’t wanna know anyhow.”

“MY BROTHER DOESN’T OWE YOU SHIT,” Edge growls. (Inexplicably, to you at least. You’re not even sure who that’s directed at or if any of you are having the same conversation.)

“LANGUAGE,” Papyrus observes absently. He looks like he’s thinking hard...you wonder if he’s _checking_ something. You’re pretty sure you’re right, and everyone’s just randomly arguing with each other. Shit. Eventually someone’s going to say something they can’t back down from.

There’s an unusually long lull between songs over the bar’s sound system; you glance at Grillby gratefully.

“Anyways.” You stop a beat to see if you’re getting interrupted again. You look at Red and Edge, schooling your expression to something less irritable.

“I think you made some assumptions about the… place you were coming to. I’m getting the gist that you could tell beforehand that here, the absorption thing didn’t go the way it did where you’re from.” You clear your throat, checking to see if they’re picking up what you’re putting down. Not quite.

“Just because _that_ didn’t happen doesn’t mean nothing happened.”

Edge looks promisingly stone-faced, but Red scoffs.

“you tryna say these bunnies got teeth? some _night of the lepus_ shit going down behind the scenes? gotta say...’m not really feelin’ the _lv_.”

Totally ignoring the fact that Papyrus had brought Edge to his knees a few minutes after they showed up. Alrighty then.

You take a leap.

“What do you know about Frisk?”

You ignore the sudden appearance of a warning skeletal hand on your thigh as Red laughs. “yer welcome to try, but shortstack here already made it clear he doesn’t want me samplin’ the wares, so s’not like i can return the favor.”

You don’t look, but whatever reaction Sans and Papyrus had to that exchange wipes the smug look off his face. He looks at his own brother and seems to like what he sees there even less, although there’s no discernible difference to you.

“darlin’,”Sans whispers warningly. Well, you don’t really want these two knowing everything about the parent of your mutual grandchild either, but the gambit was worth it so far. Apparently the answer to your question is literally nothing. But not only are Red and Edge likely to hear as much chatter about the human savior of monsterkind here as anywhere else, Frisk might just stroll right into Grillby’s at any point, with or without their skeleton child Sariel. Things that aren’t secrets can’t be kept.

You sigh, then address Sans and Papyrus. “Remember when I was sure I knew how everything worked, and thought monster everything was all idyllic and straightforward and utopian?”

“NNNYES,” Papyrus replies doubtfully.

“They’re like that, but _more_. Because they think they already know everyone.”

“what’s the meat pie gettin’ at?” Red growls, and you have to smother a laugh behind your hand. You’re the one who answers, though.

“You’re used to danger being everywhere, but in a way you can see on the surface. In a way you recognize. Sans and even Papyrus are too polite to tell you that, but...” You exhale slowly. “Has anyone ever told you that societies with higher expectations of politeness are actually more dangerous?”

They still don’t get it. Wow.

“Papyrus is the rudest monster I’ve met,” you inform them quickly, holding up a hand to forestall any objects. “And he handed you your own ass for being rude when he asked you a serious question he expected an answer to.”

“MY DEAR HUMAN,” Papyrus starts, “I APPRECIATE YOUR, UM-”

You interrupt him, ruder than the rudest monster is capable of.

“He handed you your ass, and made you _eat your words_,” you continue mercilessly; Edge definitely looks nauseous this time. “And they didn’t go down easy, based on how you looked afterwards. So maybe next time you’ll keep those words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them _again_. And. you. will. They’re _all _like that._”_

You keep on going, because they’re still resisting.

“Aaron killed a human last year that he saw in an altercation with another human. He must have felt pretty justified, because he didn’t even dust from it. As a matter of fact, he touched Sans’s magic and he’ll be able to go back in eventually.”

They’re all staring at you in horror now, if for different reasons.

“_You didn’t get the fluffy bunny timeline_,” you grit out slow and deliberate, eyes so wide they burn a little. “You ~don’t see the LV~ because shit’s a lot more _complicated_ now. Monsters have been working to integrate on the surface for fifteen years, and you two little chili peppers aren’t going to fuck it up for us. If you don’t--”

“babe.”

Sans’s hand is around your wrist now. Just holding, and not even tight. And he’s right, but he also isn’t. You know you’re not exactly diffusing the situation, but…

“_Sans_. Look at their faces.”

He does, and he sees it. They’re shocked, but doing a half decent job of covering it up. You look at Red and Edge with as much sympathy as you can muster, which is actually a lot.

“Sans and Papyrus think they _already_ told you,” you say quietly, “_everything_ I just said. Sans?”

“...yeah,” he grits out in reluctant agreement. You keep staring at Red and Edge, who have that blank look on their faces again.

“You _thought_ you understood what they meant, but you don’t. If you want to ask questions, you should.”

“babe...”

“Keeping them ignorant is too dangerous,” you whisper plaintively, and for some reason, Red flinches. “I’m not stupid,” you continue, and for some reason Edge flinches this time, “and I’m not under the impression you came from anywhere soft. But you have to know the tenderness we have…it didn’t come cheap, and we _won’t_ let it go.” Because no there are no more second chances, except the ones you make yourself.

Edge looks like he might be starting to get it, but then again… he and Papyrus already had it out. You meet Red’s bloody gaze squarely.

“We don’t know everything you’ve been through, or what it took for you to get here,” you say slowly into the fraught silence, “but _you_ don’t know what it took for _us_ to get here, either.”

Then Grillby comes with the food, because he’s usually good for tension-puncturing arrivals. Red and Edge both stare at the table and nod their thanks silently while he’s there, like looking at him bothers them.

“Thanks, Grillby,” you say softly; he just flickers in pleasant acknowledgment and leaves.

You shove a bunch of fries in your mouth, swallow hard to dissolve them, and take a page out of Flowey’s book.

“What does it say when you check me?” you ask Red in idle challenge, as if you already know the answer.

It works. His expression slides briefly askew before he puts it back.

“I think we deserve a mulligan on _all_ of this,” you conclude into the still-fraught silence, provoking another twitch of phalanges, back on your leg now. Sans isn’t the biggest fan of starting over, thematically speaking. “Maybe take some time for us all to accept _none of us_ actually have any idea what’s going on.”

“there’s no-”

You interrupt Sans, but stare into Edge’s sockets. “Red won’t make his brother a liar.” Red’s eyes flare hotly in your peripheral vision, but he doesn’t refute it.

“you really _are_ bossy,” Red says in a very different tone than before. Wary.

Good. Fine. It’s better than whatever the fuck that had been earlier. (<strike>It hurts your feelings.</strike>) But you’re picking up on the fact that much plainer talk is what it takes to get their attention properly. Sans and Papyrus just can’t quite manage to put those kind of words together in that particular way after tens of thousands of years of talking _around_ a shitty situation in order to survive it.

It’s not like you’ve never met people with Red and Edge’s little communication problem...they’ve just never been monsters.

You toss the fries back in their basket, sigh heavily and rub your face. You look at Red and Edge squarely as your hands form shaking fists.

“Sans and Papyrus _will_ just kill you,” you say pleadingly, “except they won’t because I’ll do it first so they won’t _have_ to.”

“_babe_,” Sans grunts with a little bass in his voice.

“Deny it,” you say quietly, shortly, without looking anywhere except Red’s eyes.

“I WON’T KILL ANYONE. THAT’S NOT HAPPENING.” Papyrus has some bass in his voice now, too. He doesn’t like the space where his brother’s denial isn’t.

It’s unlikely you could make good on that, not with Edge’s voice being an issue. Or the fact that Red’s words cut you in a place he’s never been himself, but has access to through very unfair circumstances. But your words cut too. More than anyone else here is capable of, for reasons you don’t entirely understand.

You can’t kill them, probably. But the important thing is that you threatened to. Along with everything else you’re forcing them to hear…they’re listening. Fucking finally.

There’s silence. You spread your hands on the table and look at those. All of a sudden you’re trying not to cry, and Papyrus’s giant hand rubs a brief little circle on your back. Sans’s hand just pats your leg, and…oh. He’s rubbing a little with his thumb.

It helps.

“It was my turn to flip my shit,” you say, swallowing the lump in your throat. “Sorry.”

“i didn’t flip my shit,” Sans says, and you scoff. (Better than sobbing.)

“I don’t know, you two went from sucking on each other’s fingers to spitting vitriol pretty quickly, I-” matching growls come from Sans and Red at the same time.

You laugh at them.

“I really don’t know why you think I’m going to pretend that didn’t happen. Or let you live it down. It went on for like _twenty_ fucking minutes. I mean...” you look at Red. “I guess _you_ haven’t met me, but Sans should know better.”

“i _am_ sans,” Red growls, unsurprisingly unmollified. You smile at him, slow and deliberate

“I know,” you reply in the most loaded tone you have.

“fuck you.”

You keep the smile easily. “Been there, done that.” You wink. “Bought the t-shirt that says I get the milk for free.”

He surprises you by not only laughing, but leaning back and closing his sockets for the first time you’ve seen. He rubs his fucked-up, scarred hand across them for good measure. He _is_ listening. Thank god.

“baker’s dozen,” he mumbles wryly. “so, is that _your_ new name? You got one already, or-?”

You tell him.

“you fuckin’ serious right now?”

You shrug, then start stuffing your face with fries doubletime. Your ~willingness to put up with this shit~ timer just dinged, the toast is popped up and it says _you’re ready for bed_ in big burnt block letters. Then you notice all your full glasses still sitting there untouched, and down two of them in quick succession so Grillby doesn’t end up drinking _five_ fucking glasses of Sans. Nothing poured ever gets wasted at Grillby’s. He’s like a monster liquor garbage disposal. You see the way everyone’s looking at you and acknowledge so are you.

“remind me not to piss you off,” Sans murmurs mildly from next to you as the last of the fries disappear.

“You piss me off all the time, Sans.”

“you two like _this_ all the time?” Red says, sounding gratifyingly disturbed as you grab his glass and down it too for good measure.

“YES.” That’s Papyrus, who became standing when you weren’t paying attention. You bounce your leg against Sans, insistently requesting egress.

“It’s nighttime,” you crank crankily. “This is when humans use the sleep, remember?”

“…you’re jus’ bailing now?” Red says, gratifyingly discombobulated.

“Humans have to sleep about eight hours every night,” you either remind or inform him as you butt-wobble sideways out of the booth, joggling Sans’s too-slow bones down the line with your wide bosc pear of an ass. “It’s nighttime for real. You have those now. Enjoy it, or don’t. It’s up to you, but do me a favor and please just wait the week out before you blow anything up, okay? Or at least until the morning. I’ll be awake again then to yell at you some more.”

Papyrus’s eye points are visible as you stand and face him.

He slowly comes forward and gives you a hug.

“I’M SO PROUD,” he says, putting his chin on your head like he does. “I’M ALSO GOING HOME NOW.”

“you sure, bro?”

“YES,” he gushes fervently, then lets you go with a little head-pat. “I WANT TO EAT REAL FOOD AND TOUCH UNGREASED FURNITURE, AMONGST OTHER WHOLESOME ACTIVITIES.”

“k. we’re stayin’ over.”

“HAVE FUN WITH THE SEX!” Papyrus yells, already at the door. It closes behind him. You take Sans’s hard, flexible hand in your meaty one and start wandering over to the bar.

“you’re-!” Red chokes off his words, but his eyes flicker when you both turn back to the table in dumpy silence. He’s leaning forward to look around his brother. They’re both giving you the same weird kid-that-needs-to-pee expression.

“you’re jus’…leavin’ us here?”

“Did you think you were in secret jail?” you snap. You’re tired, in rapidly increasing joint pain, out of patience, and done with life. For the next eight hours at least. “I _asked_ you if you had questions and you_ didn’t ask any_, so now you can fucking sit on your dicks until our next tea party.” You ignore Sans’s little wheezes of suppressed laughter. “This is fucking _Grillby’s_. Your punches end where someone else’s nose begins; otherwise do whatever the fuck you want. Drink if you have money; the food’s free for monsters in your situation. But if you want anything special you’ll have to ask someone to run down to the grocery for you since we asked you to stay here. Are you good? Need a binkie? Can I go get laid now or what?”

“BY ALL MEANS,” says Edge, who now seems to be recovering faster than his brother. “I WOULDN’T WANT TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR KEEPING YOU FROM WHATEVER UNSANITARY ACTS HUMANS ARE CAPABLE OF IN THEIR SPARE TIME.”

You point a finger gun at him.

“Pew,” you sigh exhaustedly. You let Sans, now trembling with half-choked huffs, help your limping ass up to the bar.

“you sound like you need a drink, babe,” he giggles, eyes glinting with slightly malicious mirth.

“Sorry,” you grunt unapologetically. You grind your jaw; you’ll mean it eventually. Once the white-hot pincers stop pulling out teeth inside your bones.

“nah,” Sans says quietly, helping you up onto the extra-wide barstool Grillby added a while back, the one opposite the handle on the bar to haul yourself up. You’d felt weird about him putting it in just for you until you’d seen the setup he keeps just in case Onion-San shows up. “think you made your point. gotta be real sharp with those two…though probably best when you’re not so tired, huh?”

“I love you,” you grunt as he wiggle-lurches his way up to a stool beside you. He reaches out to pat your pills against your lips, which he’d apparently pickpocketed from you at some point. You swallow them dry, too grateful to care that he chose the most tactful true word out of the available ones for what you currently are: ‘tired’. Rather than, you know. ‘You are an unbelievable asshole when you’re in pain.’ (You also know he feels a little bad for laughing most of the time, but he can’t help it.)

You don’t look at him, since you’re sure he’s thinking about the time you’d told Frisk your sister was out ‘fucking their mom in half.’ They’d been watching Angie’s kids for you on one of your unexpected surprise bad days. Although true, it hadn’t been your best look. (You’d also been pissed about what you were sure was your own upcoming annihilation at their hands, but hey. That’s still Sans’s kid.)

Grillby comes up, glances between you and Sans wordlessly.

“_You’re_ crying,” you sob resentfully at Grillby as he reaches under the bar and sets The Drink on it in front of you, already mixed.

You pick it up and down it, then fold your arms and bend over to hide your face in them as it takes effect.

“Oh fuck,” you moan as warm honey drowns the sadistic gnomes stabbing your marrow with icepicks, “Oh, god, I’m peeing. Ohhh….”

“they’re not peeing,” Sans reassures Grillby, rubbing your back just the way you like. That soothing little circle right between the shoulderblades. “you, uh. add a little extra somethin’ to that one, grillbz?”

…_.Their medication will work faster…_

“ahh, gotcha. you getting copacetic there, darlin’?”

You push yourself up on your elbows, blinking at the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.

“I feel like could punch god and walk away whistlin’,” you sigh lustily, “but instead I’m gonna sleep for a week and fuck _you_ in half when I wake up.”

The most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen smiles soft and pleased, rubs you a few more times before those talented little fingerbones disappear back into his pocket. “good ta know. gonna park yer buns here a minute? get yourself steady?”

“Yyyyyyyyyyeahhhh,” you report promptly.

_...They drank the table dry, I see._

“jus’ three of em.”

You look up at Grillby.

“You’re too tall,” you complain.

…_Not for much longer_, he crackle-whispers salaciously, and you shiver like Sans. Probably because you drank so much of him you’re dropping your ‘g’s. Speaking of which, you rummage in your empty pocket, then poke Sans in the arm until the points in his sockets slide sideways. You hold out your hand demandingly, and he fills it. With G.

You put it on the bar in a cute little pile.

…_Well. __At least __**someone**__ knows how to tip around here_, Grillby snerks. He sets a nice hot cup of something neutral in front of you to nurse while you adjust to being shitfaced, adds a glass of Sans in front of Sans.

“you c’n get more than the tip, grillbz,” Sans purrs low and quiet. “jus’ gotta ask me real nice.”

“You have to sleep first too, Sans,” you protest as Grillby whitens. He loves Sans’s bawdy talk, as long as no one else is listening. Well. Except you. Because he also loves your bawdy talk.

Grillby takes one look at your sharp little grin and turns on his heel before you can try and top that (considering you might not have Sans’s grasp of volume control at the moment), then flounces back to the end of the bar where Ug(ly Fish)’s been waving his hand in the air since before Grillby came over here.

Your turn back to Sans, who’s watching double trouble again over at table nine. You’re glad you follow his gaze, just in time to watch Red slink down under the table and across rather than asking Edge to get up so he can move...or...oh. Nevermind. He’s just staying there, and Edge is joining him.

“Think they had a Grillby’s where they’re from?” you ask quietly.

“…yeah,” Sans admits more softly than you expected. You lean forward until you can see his face a little better, and that’s softer than you expected, too. Unexpectedly sympathetic “s’probably messin’ em up.”

You watch Sans watching Sans sulk under the table and let out a slow breath. There’s a whole train(wreck) of thought going on there. Sans is used to having a ridiculously complicated relationship with himself already; makes you wonder if the newly arrived iteration of Sans is the same. Sans...anytime he’s sufficiently upset, he generally wants to have sex about it for post-traumatic reasons.

You think about Red’s behavior; reacting with gross come-ons and harassment anytime he’s...oh. When he’s frightened or upset, or feels like he’s losing control of a situation. Which would seem to be since the moment he got here, and presumably for quite some time beforehand. And if Red’s also _Chara_….oh. Oh god.

Edge’s….determination to keep his brother in check makes a little more sense. Not that you’re okay with that, or him, or anything that’s happening. But at least you’re comfortably intoxicated and no longer in pain.

You think about Sans’s complex soul-body-mind relationship; sometimes a therapeutic split, other times a bleeding fracture. You think about how pervasively having sex with Sans is an extension of Sans having sex with himself, and how in a lot of ways (and for good reasons) his primary and most intense sexual relationship _is_ with himself.

You feel your lips quirk into a half smile. You don’t always have to _check_ to know the future. Sans gazes at your silence curiously.

“Do me a favor and let me know when you finally bring yourself to fuck him,” you request blandly.

“th-” The word strangles off as his eye lights flicker and shrink. He makes his dry throat-clearing noise, eyes darting away for a second before he can control his expression. “_that_ ain’t happening,” he rasps.

He is, of course, lying. The surprising part is that he was thrown enough to flatly deny it instead of making any of a hundred flippant evasions or unoriginal jokes about it. You just aim your facial expression at him, the one you both know means you know he’s lying. Then his sockets narrow suspiciously.

“why d’you want to know?” he asks. “human feelings n stuff?” he adds, a little more hesitant. He means jealousy; you’ll think about that whole mess later. When you’re sober enough to put yourself into the headspace of a culture with absolutely no tradition of sexual exclusivity, nor words that define ‘a sexual relationship’.

“So we can talk about it,” you answer like it’s obvious, “and I can gauge how much it fucked you up in the head.” You shrug and raise your eyebrows. Then you lean in; he shuts his sockets as you press your forehead to his. Sans loves public affection (and you love that he loves it despite being unaccustomed to it). He gives you a little nudge-and-nuzzle, along with a happy sigh for you to inhale and give back to him. At some point you’d realized exchange of breath is an important part of a monster “nuzzle”.

You pull away. “I think I can walk to bed now,” you say contentedly. “I’m gonna hit the can and then the sack. You coming?”

“mm.” Sans looks at you lovingly. He’s good at that. “think i’m gonna keep an eye on them for a few more minutes.”

You stand together. Sans saunters his way back to Table 9 as you push your way through the fire door. Grillby had it rigged to admit you around the same time you’d admitted yourself to his bed.

You’re more than ready to sleep it off, wake up, then give it another try.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Because I’m awful, if I was going to attempt Underfell, I had to come up with a concrete reason why it’s Underfell. Massive personality changes for everyone necessitated an explanation, and so I looked over the numbers I punched into everything and found one. Turns out there’s consequences.
> 
> -I sure do love the word 'iteration'.
> 
> -Lagrangian!  
https://www.britannica.com/science/Lagrangian-function


	3. alle bande der natur

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The pAper chAse – Wait Until I Get My Hands On You  
https://youtu.be/z7K8zgopz04
> 
> This song has one of the most egregious samples of an aria I’ve ever heard, which is where the chapter title comes from. The climax merging the two dissonant melodies is one of the more surprising musical progressions I’ve heard since Mozart was being a perverse little B-flat-inserting imp. (That is, if you make it past the ‘you’re not allowed to do that to a piano’ portion…)  
I couldn’t have come up with a better song to invoke Red’s fragmented internal hellscape if I’d written it myself.
> 
> **[past abuse, memories of violence, emotional & physical influence of unknown origin, implied past sex work]**

Sans the skeleton, who’s having a surprisingly easy time thinking of himself as Red, hasn’t felt this far out of his element in a surprisingly long time. His element being more of a periodic table of violence and debasement toward the end there. Anyone still left alive underground was at least as fucked up as he is by the time he and his brother made their hasty departure, and that’s saying something.

Turns out he still doesn’t care for it much.

Being under the table here brings back a lot of memories he doesn’t much care for either, but that’s true of everywhere he’s ever been. At least this place has a different floor plan, not that he doesn’t already have that memorized. He knows exactly where everything is, and who exactly is where. Hiding in here doesn’t affect any dimension of his vision other than primary of course, and it feels less…exposed.

Red has both the unemptied glasses clutched to his chest, deciding whether to drink them or put them away in his phone with the rest of the bounty he had purchased impulsively from the Papyrus who is-and-isn’t his brother. This is Sans in the glasses, of course, filling up the space under the table with its fermented tart-cherry scent, but that doesn’t mean he’s about to turn down a free drink.

G goes a lot farther here than he thought. Although he’s not planning on basing his exchange rate on one interaction with an iteration of his brother, it’s promising that their little nest egg’s mostly untouched despite also having several slots filled on both of their phones. With _prepared_ food, ripe with good intentions just in case they get into another scrap.

Red tenses as slippered bone feet hit the floor across the bar. His brother doesn’t miss a trick, either.

“_YOU’RE_ WELCOME TO TIPPLE YOURSELF TIL YOUR HEART’S CONTENT ON THAT CLOYING GARBAGE, BROTHER. MY PALATE REMAINS BIT MORE…REFINED, DESPITE THE CHANGES IN NOMENCLATURE.”

Red sighs silently, puts the drinks away. He fills his brother’s demanding glove with G.

Papyrus—no, it’s _Edge_ now— unfolds his long, leatherette-encased bones from under the table and clops off towards the bar as Sans approaches. Tactfully giving them some privacy so he and Red can attend to whatever unpleasantness needs to be hashed out between them, much like he and Papyrus already had. Red waits until those bubblegum pink house shoes stop at the table, then barrel rolls out from underneath just to make him step back. He’d already started moving when Red did, so his shuffling steps aren’t even rushed.

Red stands just in time to see the fire door of a place he never thought he’d see again shut behind the human who apparently has the clearance to fucking _use_ it. Despite already suspecting Grillby of having some interesting plans later, seeing proof of it still rattles him.

He thinks about what you’d said.

About the Check.

Reader (yes, really)

LV: 1 (justified)

AT: 20 (words)

DF: 0 (brittle)

HP: 8 of 8 of 10 (variable negative values against 87e^0.3x-80+1)

* Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Red twists his phalanges into his pockets to keep from pulling the cork out of his smile and sucking his fingers sharp. Even the thought is enough to set off his cravings for the smoking, reeking stubs he almost always had crammed into the hole in his face back underground. He misses that protective veil of smoke heralding his arrival, masking his scent while simultaneously lulling everyone into a false sense of security that they’d always be able to smell Red coming.

(Until they didn’t.)

Well. Everywhere except the house. <strike>Papyrus</strike> Edge had hated them; regardless, they’ve both been floundering a bit without its presence in their nonverbal communications and signaling. You kinda remind him of his brother, now he thinks on it. Get real still when they’re spooked, but once they get their feet under em you better look the fuck out. Feels pretty blue if you ask Red, but he’s never met a human before.

Red realizes he’s just been staring at the door like a crackskull puppy when Sans snarks at him.

“if you’re looking for a _new pal_, you’re gonna have to try a lil harder than that,” he rumbles through the pearly whites Red hasn’t seen in the mirror for longer than he cares to calculate (he knows exactly how long it’s been). “might wanna borrow paps’s dating manual for starters.”

Red looks at this smarmy, white-eyed version of himself with more resentment than he thought he had left in him. The fact that Sans walks around dressed like a fucking slut, scent all up in Red’s nasal cavity like butterscotch and a good time tells him more about this place than any bullshit that little meat pie of his wants to lay on Red.

“what the hell kinda name’s _reader_?” he finds himself hissing.

Sans arches an orbital bone at him, already slumping onto the end of the booth seat. “a better one than comic fuckin _sans_.”

Red scoffs as he sits opposite. “it’s _red_ now. thanks for the new name, sucker.”

Sans just lobs back a mellow smile, and Red’s mouth goes off some more. He’s too thrown to keep its leash as tight as he’d like, but at least it’s shooting the shit in a well-deserved direction.

“you sure they’re not from our neck a the woods, shortstack? got some mouth on ‘em.”

Sans bobs his skull with amusement, smug as a filthy little pigeon in a nest of his own chalky shit. Red wonders if _he_ used to be that good looking. Don’t know what ya got til it’s gone, he supposes.

“they’re _human_, pumpkin,” Sans coos deeply. Red narrows his sockets around his admittedly orange-ish foci. There's not much patience left in him. “what’s your excuse?”

“your face.” It’s a throwaway non-answer, but it makes Sans’s expression go flat. There’s that chill; the one that tells Red clear as clams this sweet little tart’s chock full of poison.

And he dismisses it again. It’s easy, sliding right into the roiling mass of things Red’s aggressively not-thinking about right now. Just let it the problem eat itself along with the rest of it. Not a single monster here’s got LV except Grillby; if Sans isn’t putting his money where his mouth is, it’s no concern of Red’s. All talk, just like his human piece.

“glad ta help. need anything else ‘fore i head out? fuck your mother? bag a sand, maybe? toothbrush?”

Red narrows his sockets. “how bout a hand job?” he leers. He may not have had a chance to case this place to his own standards yet, but monsters here run their mouths even more than they did in his underground. He doesn’t need bugs to read lips.

Sans grunts. “think i’ll leave the dirty work to you. smell ya later, chuckles,” he murmurs, and doesn’t bother standing up before noping the hell out of there.

Red can’t really blame him. He sends his tertiary vision over his brother’s clothing; he might even have time and energy for a few repairs if things keep going this well. Red returns his eyes to the empty booth seat opposite when his brother stands up, well before he turns around; he knows Red doesn’t like being alone. Red hears the clop of boots already approaching like the answer to the coil of vulnerability Red felt in his soul the second Sans departed (he’s in the back with the human now).

Unfortunately, Grillby approaches on the slightly elevated heels of his brother's return.

Of course he would. He can do whatever he wants; this is _his_ place. A safe zone for those without LV back when there’d been any, along with those with who just desperately needed a chance to not be fighting for their lives for a little while. The one Red had desecrated just as surely as if he’d burned it down himself, with Grillby thrown in as kindling.

Grillby completes his approach while Red tries to ignore what feels like his soul cracking right in half. Does a half decent job, since as far as feelings go, that’s one he’s gotten used to. He keeps his primary vision on the seat of the booth opposite, a little to the side of where his brother fills it, signing permission to (soul-truth) at Grillby. Nothing wrong with taking a moment to brace himself.

… _Well. Isn’t this interesting. What can I get for you, Sans? Papyrus?_

“YOU MAY ADDRESS ME AS EDGE, FOR THE PURPOSE OF CLARITY. MY BROTHER IS… RED.” He flicks his eyes at Red with an amused little twitch of his mouth. “AP_PAR_ENTLY.”

“hmm,” Red sighs, light and airy, “can’t really deny it.”

The dilute determination constantly bleeding out into every monster’s soul in the underground he and his brother had escaped from had tinted everyone’s soul red. Still does, for Red and address-me-as-Edge. The color itself had gained certain connotations as a result, considering the red had leached out into various body parts that turned out to be more continuous with souls than even many monsters knew. Some monsters’ eyes had been red like theirs; nearly everyone’s spend had been tinged with it. Tongues and junk, if they had either. Someone who’s “red” is tense and sweaty; unnerved, riled up, or aroused in some way.

Welp. The shoe fits.

Obviously the same doesn’t apply here, but Red doesn’t mind a few inside jokes. At least Papyrus… or, Edge now… gets it.

That’s going to take some getting used to.

Speaking of which, Red finally forces his eyes up at Grillby, who decidedly _isn’t_ red… literal or figurative despite his promisingly occupied bed in the back room. More a yellow color, fading out to orange at the edges. Just like the scenery in Hotland, or human depictions of fire.

…_It’s my understanding you’ll be here at least the week, although… _He trails off, looks back and forth between them. _…I want to make it clear that you’re welcome to stay as long as you __need to, __as long as you__ don’t make __yourselves__ a nuisance__. Paying customers have priority, but you can order anything you like as long as it’s burgers or fries._

Red snorts despite himself. Grillby's spiel always did come with a side order of warm, dry humor. Not that Red ever forgot it. His magic seethes in his face with a welter of indescribable emotions. He flinches as his brother’s nasal cavity twitches, and he misses his cigars all over again.

(He’s still too afraid to look outside. He wonders if he could find the stuff he used to use to make them here. The _surface_, holy flipping bitch-tits. Red stuffs those thoughts back in the ball of nope, shoves it down deep.)

… _I see__ you’ve put your drinks away. __That is fine, but__ please know that they may not leave the premises.__ It’s my understanding __**you**__ have also agreed not to do so?_

“yeah,” Red says hoarsely.

A flicker-nod. _…Whatever deal you have with yourselves is your business. I will neither prevent you from leaving...not that I could, _and there’s that dry humor that tears Red’s soul again,_ …nor keep it secret. _He flickers with amusement._ …This is not...__what was it…? __yes__… __secret jail._

Grillby takes out a monster phone, summons up several pillows and throws them under the table. Two folded blankets follow. Red stares up at him, baffled.

_...Do you…? Not need to sleep soon?_ Grillby makes a short, rough crackle._ …Pardon me. That is __also__ none of my business. Rather, if you wish to sleep, you may do so beneath the table or on the seats...and although I prefer patrons do not sleep __**on**__ the tables, it is not forbidden to do._

Red’s magic feels thick and heavy in his skull. He doesn’t know why Grillby thinks he needs to sleep, but that’s exactly the kind of thing Grillbz would have said if he hadn’t spent half his life babysitting a bunch of lv-crazed assholes trying to bite each others’ throats out the second his back was turned. How Red used to imagine he must have been...before. Before his flames turned as orange-red as Red’s foci; before they’d ever met.

…_I can frequently busy myself elsewhere, if you--_

“NO.” it’s an adamant caw from across the table; Pap...Edge looks oddly soft around the sockets. Red pretends he doesn’t notice. “NO, WE’RE FINE.”

Red has to admit he feels the same. Just because Grillby’s presence hurts, doesn’t mean he wants it any less.

…_Let me know if you need anything._

He returns back to the bar as a group of three more patrons arrive, chatting about some kind of festival they’d been at. Oh. Sounds like it’s the anniversary of the barrier falling, which Red probably should have figured the little lambs would _celebrate_. For Red, it’d just been a symbol representing a number representing a concept scratched into his mangled notebook, furiously running the figures over and over to make sure this bet was his best. For him and his brother.

(He really had expected they’d both be annihilated.)

(<strike>_Or maybe he’d just wanted _</strike><strike>_it to finally be over_</strike><strike>_._</strike>)

Red and Edge go back under the table as another, much noisier group arrives from the Barrierfall festival. Held _underground_, apparently. Red can’t imagine why anyone would ever go there again willingly, but it seems most of the monster population managed to at least make an appearance for some portion of its duration. From the sound of it, Red can understand why they’d want a drink after that. Basically a fucking nonstop funeral held during a prison tour.

Still no LV.

The new group talks about _how_ that had happened; Red and his brother look at each other in scoffing disbelief as Red debriefs him in a barely-audible whisper. Fairy tale bullshit; the “Frisk” you’d mentioned before is apparently a proper noun rather than a verb. A human who’d ‘freed the monsters’ by destroying the barrier. Red doesn't know all that much about this timeline’s nuts and bolts, but he knows it would have taken a lot more than a plucky human child to do something like that.

The afterparty rush of patrons eventually peters out, and everyone goes home except the smashed Bun across the room, two dogs at a freestanding table, and an ugly fish Red feels like he vaguely remembers from back underground putting down roots at the bar before mysteriously disappearing one day. No wonder; he’d go off somewhere private with anyone who seemed interested.

Red keeps his surprise inside while the fish pours his own, then leaves a pile of G on the bar. The whole counter’s covered in it, and Grillby goes along, scooping them clear and putting the money away.

He cleans up, wipes down, and then he goes to the back. Doesn’t even lock up. Well, whatever.

Red darts his eyes at his brother; he nods without looking at him. Red takes out one of his own filthy shirts out of his pocket, one with a few slashes across where his generous belly would be if he actually had one. Its familiar reek of pain and fear is counterintuitively soothing. Smells like home.

Red’s phalanges seek his brother without looking up from where he manipulates the slits in the cloth. Distal thumb and forefinger unerringly find the little knot hidden in his ragged scarf, close to the vertebrae behind the silver bonerow clasp. They press the knot’s center in a pattern and when he finally pulls, a long, red thread comes free while pinky and ringfinger tips snatch one of the dozens of needles woven through the cloth on the way out. Red perceives exactly how much will be needed for the mend, then holds that bit stretched taut for Pap—_Edge_ to bite through neatly. He does so without comment, or paying attention to anything except the room.

They take a spoonful of comfort in their usual routine of temporary rest mode. Not _home_, safe inside concentric rings of puzzles and traps, but not in as much danger as usual. They won’t ever see it again, but not even home had been safe anymore. Nowhere would have been…but they take comfort where they can find it.

Red begins darning the spare clothing with lightning speed while his brother keeps watch with his weak vision. Red continues watching with his secondary and tertiary vision. They don’t really know how to be here yet, and they’re doing so pretty uneasily. The human can talk as much shit as they like, but if they think Red and Edge aren’t already on the constant lookout for threats, they’re a lot stupider than they look.

The fish pours again…and leaves a fucking pile of G _right there_ on the bar, even though Grillby isn’t here anymore. After a while of nothing else happening and Red winding up tighter than the seam he’s creating, he hisses in surprise as the needle jabs into bone.

There’s an explosive sigh next to him. “_WHAT_?”

Red hunches defensively. He’s pretty sure he’s never stabbed himself with his own goddamn needle before, but then again he’s never seen someone leave a pile of G out for anyone to help themselves to before, either. And much to his annoyance, it turns out he’s too freaked out by it to just snatch it up like he should.

“that’s fucked up, boss. makes me itchy.”

“WE’RE STILL TOGETHER, AND WE’RE NOT DEAD,” Edge states coldly. “WE HAVE BEEN FED, WATERED, AND OFFERED REFUGE FOR ONE WEEK, EVEN IF THE PRICE WAS NOT CLEARLY STATED. WE ARE BEGGARS, AND TO SOME DEGREE WE ALSO HAVE BEEN GRANTED LIMITED STATUS AS CHOOSERS.” Red hunches further and quickly resumes sewing. “ARE YOU _BORED_, PERHAPS? I COULD ALWAYS STUFF YOUR OBNOXIOUS SKULL INTO YOUR PELVIS AND SEE HOW FAR I CAN ROLL YOU DOWN THE BAR IF IT’LL SPARE ME YOUR BELLYACHING.”

Red sighs silently. They’re _both_ pisspants scared. Existentially terrified on top of it, and ain’t that an ironic little fuckarow.

Red can’t even thinking about all that _nothing_ up top outside; it’s part of why they’re both under the table right now. An extra roof between them and the fucking void. His brother’s just as wound up as he is, and of course he’d feel responsible for Red’s complaining. Probably feels like it’s directed at him, even though he’s the one who fucking asked.

Instead of nipping back, Red gives his bro his sharpest grin, then wiggles two fingers through the remaining slash in the front of his dusty spare shirt. “that’s alright, boss. belly’s jus’ fine considering i don’t got one.” He glances around the quiet room, jangly music playing over whatever passes for a sound system in this ‘verse. “’sides, i got a feeling that lil song n dance would be wasted on this crowd.”

“I COULD ALWAYS SING,” Edge adds, and Red can’t help the snerk that slips out of his skull. He flicks a glance at his brother; he’s maybe two percent calmer.

“nahhh, ‘s more than enough to grace em with your presence. these rubes couldn’t handle yer great an’ terribleness.” Red leans over until his shoulder brushes his brother’s arm, companionable and brief.

Unfortunately, talking about Edge’s singing makes him think about his brother’s voice, and what the hell Red’s supposed to do if Edge isn’t allowed to get Red under control. Feels like someone pulled the net out from under the highwire of Red’s existence, and knowing it makes it harder than usual to stuff the anxiety back down. By anyone’s standards, Papyrus’s condition for their continued state of being tolerated is obvious. That Edge abstains from using the full force of his voice on anyone including Red, because it apparently works differently here than it did back home. More of an AOE than a targeted suggestion; Red feels a brief regret it hadn’t been useful that way where they’re from...and he supposes it’s not useful here either, until it is.

Red fully expects Edge to work through all its tactical implications. That’s where his brother excels, after all. Strategy and planning; Red runs information, both gathering and weaponizing. The combination is lethally effective, to the point where there _wasn’t_ much point anymore, considering how few monsters had been left by the time--

“I SUPPOSE MY SELF-HARMONIZING RENDITION OF _WE HAVE NO HEADS_ MIGHT ALSO BE WASTED ON THIS PARTICULAR GATHERING,” Edge says, mouth twitching towards something suspiciously close to a sincere smile. He’s about to say something else (or start singing, which is even better), when they’re both very surprised by something they’d understood conceptually, but had no way to really prepare for in a more...pragmatic sense.

Red and his brother both let out an involuntary shuddering exhale, relaxing despite themselves when they feel what has to be at least two exposed monster souls in the vicinity. Red can smell how badly they both want to cry, along with their shared pride that they don’t. All their magic stays inside where it belongs, and Red puts away his finished darning. He weaves the needle back into the same slot he’d had pulled it from, and he leans back against the wall next to his brother.

“…_shit_. now _that_ takes me back,” Red breathes in amazement, forgetting in the moment how they don’t have any memories that aren’t painful anymore. “s’like that ti…”

His voice loosens right out of existence into a shocked huff as something ** e l s e **adds itself to the general ambience, rolling through everyone like an inebriating tide. He watches Edge’s dark eyes expand helplessly like drops of blood on the floor. The shithammered bunny in the booth across the way giggles and sighs; a Dog in patterned pants slithers out of their chair to lie right down on the floor with a thump. Facedown.

“oh fuck,” Red comments mildly, contrasting with the fact that he can no longer focus his eyes, no matter how he tries to force it. Can’t even panic about it either. He looks over at his brother in time to catch at least two slow, catlike blinks through the haze. Then Papy- no, _Edge_\- attempts to compose himself and gives Red what is probably supposed to be a fake disgusted expression.

“GO AHEAD, YOU LAZY PIECE OF GARBAGE,” he gripes indulgently. His harsh, scarred face has softened to an impressive degree, and it’s not just the greasy-lens focus of their shared inebriation. “I’LL TAKE FIRST WATCH.”

“aww…thanks, boss,” Red hears his own voice softened and mushy with what can only be the _human’s_ exposed soul in some sort of interaction with what he’d bet his nonexistent balls are Sans’s and Grillby’s souls. “you’re a real...boss.”

Red’s giggle is suspiciously high-pitched, but he can’t do anything about it now. His brother just grunts noncommittally, but Red can see his little happy-Papy’s shoulders lowered a good three inches from where he usually keeps them tight and square, always tensed for a knife in between. Red can’t even scold himself for the playful nickname that hasn’t occurred to him in centuries; he can’t help it with that scarred, sour face all soft around the edges (heh heh...get it) with baby-wonder. He keeps staring out into the room with his weak eyes, keeping watch for absolutely nothing. No monster, no matter how LVvy, could muster up killing intent with _this_ going on.

Red can’t even (<strike>refuses to</strike>) remember the last time he felt this good. In fact, if this is what the monsters here have access to on a regular basis, it’s no wonder they’re all so warm and fuzzy. There’s no arguing with the absolute certainty sinking into Red’s joints, skull, _soul_ that he’s in a _safe place_ now, and it’s nice to just give in to it. Stop fighting, finally give up, let it take him.

_Safe and warm; love-hope-compassion. Everything is going to be o k a y._

He leans a shoulder into his brother’s arm with a hefty sigh, closes his sockets around eyes already gone loose and just...sleeps. He hasn’t done that in a month or two at least. Not since…oh, right. He’s asleep, so he doesn’t have to think about it right now. After a while his mood drifts towards where it usually does when he’s stressed, so he judiciously slithers into a lying-down position, pulls a blanket over himself, and rolls against the padded booth seat to put a little distance between them while he remains aware of the passive warmth in his pelvis.

Only to wake instantly and silently a few hours later, sockets snapping open as a bare phalanx touches the base of his skull in warning, traces a quick instruction along with a jolt of his brother’s visceral alarm.

_The bar (ASSESSMENT→IMMEDIATE)_

Red sits up quickly when he feels the new presence, blanket fallen as the warmth in his pelvis disappears without a trace. He creeps out to the entrance of their little hidey-hole where his brother’s guarding him, trying to get a clear peep with his primary. It’s some human, _huge_, with…

...fuck...

Oh, fuck.

In Red’s sleep-muddled mind, the human has Papyrus in their lap, calmly feeding him french fries with...no. That’s a babybones, but it’s not Papyrus. _No__t_ Papyrus, but it is a _skeleton_, an _infant_, and Red…

He looks at his brother helplessly, equally shocked with no insight forthcoming to reassure him. Edge is still partially in front of him, blocking any potential attacks with his body. But this isn’t an attack they can dodge or return. It’s just a big, round human with choppy, unkempt hair feeding Grillby’s specialty cheese fries to a baby skeleton, who’s wearing striped onesie in the pattern of Snowdin just for extra surreal points.

Yeah. No big deal.

Red ducks behind one of his brother’s re-squared, padded shoulders. He takes one of the glasses of Sans out of his phone and guzzles it through his teeth before peeping back out at the room. The fish and the dogs from before have left; another Dog is playing cards with itself in the corner. Ahh. Greater Dog, resurrected and having found some less violent hobbies, apparently. Long time no smell. There are several piles of unattended G on the bar now.

“this’s fucked up,” Red hears himself whisper again.

“WELL, THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME. WHAT DID YOU _EXPECT_,” his brother snaps, trying to seem less flustered. As if Edge expected any of this, and isn’t just as rattled. The human at the bar doesn’t look at them; minds their own business.

The baby skeleton’s looking at _him_, though. Red flinches, then again as the fire door opens and you come out all sleep-grubby in nothing but a pair of what are obviously Sans’s shorts. You greet the human at the bar and hang a right, opening another door to the small room off the main one and closing, then locking it behind you. There’s water and cupboards and various porcelain structures Red’s seen depicted in human trash from the surface, a little different but still probably human toilet facilities. You use them while the human with the skeleton finishes feeding the baby.

Then they leave another pile of money on the counter, starts wrapping the child in an additional covering that looks like a blanket with sleeves. You reappear, wander over and start wiggling your hands at them.

Red looks at his brother, then they both look back at you. Neither of them understand what you’re saying, even when you glance at them surreptitiously. It’s not the language they use, nor any of the ones monsters back home use for signaling _or_ fluent speech. The big human huffs; you point at them as if punctuating a request or insight and mouth “Frisk”.

Red twitches. That’s the “kid” who broke the barrier, the name you’d said what feels like a disturbingly consistent amount of hours ago. Yeah...the undilated time’s probably getting to him, too. Red feeling poured on the floor makes sense, even if nothing else does.

You do what can only be assumed is shoot the shit with the other human, “Frisk”, for a minute or two, and then they turn around (Red flinches away from those glittering black irises; he can’t stop it), holds what he can only assume is _their_ baby close (and _what_ the fuck, _whatthefuck_), and leaves through the main door.

You give him a look like you feel sorry for him (he cuts off a growl), then go right back through the fire door without a care in the goddamned world.

A few minutes later Grillby comes back out of it, just in time for three or four monsters to come in and sit at the bar. Like this is all normal shit. He doesn’t even bother to look at or count the money at the bar; maybe Sans keeps an eye on it for him. Red’s not used to there being another one of him around, so maybe this place is more secure than he’d been giving it credit for.

He just doesn’t like to think about the times he used keep an eye for Grillby. Back before…

Nope. Nuh uh. He’s not doing that to himself right now, not if his brother can’t even take him in hand. He’s got to find some kind of way to deal with this himself, and it’s a tall fucking order. It’s…

Fuck.

Red pulls out the second glass of Sans and drinks it, reaches up and pushes the empty glass onto the tabletop. Edge is already back against the wall under the booth, folded up neatly like a pile of leather-wrapped sticks. Red stays there at their nest’s entrance, ostensibly watching completely normal, absolutely bizarre things continue to happen. And they do, but he’s not… watching them.

At first Red thinks it’s what he drank, but that’s a set of feelings he can account for: a fairly predictable loosening of the leash he keeps on his mouth, the blade of hate lodged in his soul losing its keenness, and a tendency to think in ascendingly ridiculous and convoluted metaphors. All familiar, all _him_. Essentially.

And then he wonders if Sans and the human have their souls out, but he’s already felt that, and it’s kinda hard to fucking ignore in both himself, and the obvious effects it had on everyone in here. He looks around the room again, just in case. The bun’s the same, so is Grillby himself and all his new customers. And this doesn’t feel the same, no one’s acting like anything is _wrong_. And maybe it’s not...but this….

There’s no doubt about it. The soul effect’s gone; this is something very Else. Something creeping up on him, and getting just as hard to ignore as the other thing.

Red squirms, hand tugging the leg of his shorts to jog loose a sudden flare of heat.

_yeahhh…that’ll do it_

It doesn’t go anywhere.

“you hear that?” he huffs.

Edge’s expression creases in annoyance; he doesn’t look at Red.

“I HAVEN’T FALLEN FOR THAT LITTLE JAPE OF YOURS IN EONS, BROTHER. IT TAKES MORE THAN A JAUNT ACROSS THE MULTIVERSE TO MAKE ME SUSCEPTIBLE TO THE CLASSICS.”

Red stares at the fire door, the heat in his pelvis slowly and inexplicably increasing. The minutes drag by one by one, each one taking no more or less than a minute. It’s fucked up. Red tries to shift the way he’s sitting, but that doesn’t help, either. He’s not even in the _mood_, and this is not the fucking time.

Literally.

_ohh…_ _o-oh god, y-you--_

“_WHAT_ PRECISELY IS YOUR_ MAJOR MALFUNCTION_, BROTHER?”

Red chokes off the strange whine coming from his skull, keeps his back turned. He can’t exactly grind his teeth anymore, but that doesn’t stop him from trying until his skull aches. There’s nowhere to go.

“think i jus’ sat in a bigass puddle of _nunya_, boss,” he grits out, then flinches reflexively as his brother’s gloved phalanges hook into the back of his collar. That implacable grip yanks him back until he’s leaning against the wall, too.

Edge leans in closer, a concerned crease appearing in the smooth bone between his sockets. Red tries to shy away, but his brother’s hands can’t be argued with; he’s helpless as those needled teeth part and Edge inhales slightly. His nasal aperture quivers, then his teeth slam shut with a faint clack as he hurriedly releases Red’s collar. He ducks his own skull, keeps his teeth closed when he begins to speak…quietly.

“Sans,” his brother says in a radically different tone, volume damped to stay under the table. He leans even closer, gets even quieter as he scrambles for tact. “If you need to-”

Red feels his foci flicker shut; his skull swivels like a blank-socketed viper to face him with a hiss.

“der _h__ölle __r__ache_,” he snarls viciously into his brother’s face.

It’s Papyrus’s turn to flinch; the flash of hurt on his face right before he plasters it over with disdain twists a knife of regret between Red’s ribs. Red goes still as Papyrus-- no, _Edge_ now, why is it easier to think of _himself_ as someone else than his brother?-- slithers right out from under the table and stalks arrogantly over to the bar, the blocky heels of his motorcycle boots clopping on the floor lightly.

Red feels irrelevantly glad he’d talked him into wearing (what for him passes as) flats while tries to make himself breathe normally. Then again, he could really go for the skullsplitting distraction of his brother mincing across the tables in stilettos, bellowing _WE DRINK AND WE DIE AND CONTINUE TO DRINK_ at the top of his lungs like two bonesaws fucking each other. But Edge just sits down and crosses his long, leather-clad legs primly at the knee; he’s not even bouncing his foot. Not a soul would guess anything was wrong.

Unless they’re a Sans, of course. A Sans who just bitchslapped his little brother for being worried about him. Red makes the mistake of closing his sockets with regret for just a moment.

_sh-shit; okay, okay…_

Red’s breath shudders out the cracks between smashed teeth. He _doesn’t_ hear his own voice, thick with pleasure and edged with anxiety. With _urgency_. He _doesn’t_.

He yanks his fur hood up over his head and bows it, nasal aperture flaring. He digs sharpened fingertips into his fused ankle until he thinks better of it. He tries thinking about all the things that fill his marrow with frozen lead, and there’s so fucking many, aren’t there? You’d think one of em would _work_.

Fuck.

One of the bunny kids Falling right there as Papyrus has to put down her LV-crazed mom--

(<strike>that mom on her back </strike><strike>a thousand years earlier</strike><strike>, </strike><strike>his fingers </strike><strike>slicked up</strike><strike> in</strike><strike>side</strike><strike>and her scent</strike><strike> filling his skull--</strike>)

Alphys’s sharp gaze gone wooden and dull from whatever that shit was she cooked up after hours down in the lab--

(<strike>claws </strike><strike>on</strike><strike>him</strike><strike> careful and easy like he was some sweet </strike><strike>little </strike><strike>thing </strike><strike>that deserved </strike><strike>it</strike>)

Finding Grillby’s dust between the sheets of the fireproof bed--

(<strike>all</strike><strike> filled up with </strike><strike>that rough, hot fire--</strike>)

Asgore forcing Papyrus to touch Sans’s constructs and watching his HP drain out one by one for shits and giggles

<strike>(</strike> <strike>his own mittened </strike> <strike>fist</strike> <strike> furiously working </strike> <strike>between his legs</strike> <strike>, </strike> <strike>the other</strike> <strike>muffling</strike> <strike> his ragged breathing </strike> <strike>so he can hear</strike> <strike> that vicious, </strike> <strike>musical</strike> <strike>, bugfuck-crazy voice </strike> <strike>telling</strike> <strike> him to </strike> <strike> _be good_ </strike> <strike>)</strike>

Red wishes he could _bite_ something, tries thinking about dust churned into snow but he’s--

<strike>(</strike> <strike>grinding</strike> <strike> his f</strike> <strike>orehead</strike> <strike> against the door to the ruins, </strike> <strike>his shoulder heaving</strike> <strike>until he jerks and grunts,</strike> <strike> betrayal</strike> <strike> soaking through </strike> <strike>cloth</strike> <strike>to gush</strike> <strike> down his femurs</strike> <strike>\--)</strike>

…_.oh fuck, feels like—_

Red wipes a strangled almost-moan into his sleeve and flops over, crawls out from under the table with a huff.

Time for a change of venue. Something distracting. His magic’s agitated all to hell, and if this keeps up everyone in here’s going to be able to smell exactly what Red’s problem is without getting any closer.

He takes a quick second to comb the room with his primary dimension of vision, looking for--

Oh.

There’s that sweet lil bunny over in the booth all by her lonesome, like she’s waiting for nobody in particular to join the personal party she’s got going on. Red stands with a grunt he passes off as one of effort, decides to mosey on over and see what’s what. Not that Red wants anyone else polishing his pelvis, but he might like some company while he does it. Red feels his nasal aperture flare with the thick scent of his own interest in some warm furry hugs, maybe some sweet talk while he gets himself there. The boss won’t notice a few coins gone from their stockpile.

(He will, but too late to stop him. The comeuppance probably won’t even be all that bad. He knows by now that Red’s having a rough time...adjusting, and he’s trying to keep an even keel without his safety net.)

He’ll get her there too if she wants; never let it be said a Sans won’t make good, even on an implied promise. After all, he’s been on the other end of the leash more than a few times himself.

Red saunters over, slides into the booth with his best charming grin. It might be busted, but he can make it work for its supper when he needs it to.

“you got a name, sweetheart?”

“Lola,” she answers low and husky, a different voice than the one she’d been hollering drunkenly in. It surprises him, as does a flash of something he can’t quite categorize under her heavy lids. “That’ll be ten G.”

“no shit,” Red gripes, although he’s kind of impressed. Letting Red know where he stands off the bat. He huffs, looks at<strike> Papyrus’s </strike>Edge’s back without moving his eyes. He’s got a lot of practice at that, just makes sure he’s not paying attention. Not watching Red dip into their little nest egg.

Red fishes out the money, slaps it on the table. The mitten makes his hand sound like any other monster’s hand, so bone and money together don’t tip his brother off either.

“Thank you,” she says evenly. Her hand comes up and scrapes the money off the table, makes it disappear silently. “Next time will be twice that.”

“_next_ time?” Red growls. “we ain’t even-”

“Ahhh,” Lola interrupts. Her nostrils flutter briefly, she otherwise remains unmoving. “I see.” Red suppresses a gasp when he sees something _impossibly sharp and incredibly dangerous_ flicker somewhere under those heavy lids. 

There’s a long, considering silence.  I t isn’t until she continues that Red realizes he stopped breathing. 

“It’s been some time since I’ve come across that little misunderstanding.” Her smile is slow, and he can’t see behind it like he usually can. He stares at her flat teeth, tasting untold centuries of secrets in her mouth without having to get any closer. “You are paying for my conversation. My company. No cunny for sale here.”

Red doesn’t  mention th at the first two had been all he’d planned to avail himself of in the first place.  To her credit, s he’s managed to  mightily  interest him in both  after less than a minute.  She’d named her price,  then proven handily that she’s more than entitled to  do so .  He keeps that to himself as well.  No point in haggling against  his own best interests .

“understood,” he says slow and careful. 

He puts the  (gratuitous)  requested amount on the table between them and waits to see what happens.  Turns out that’s nothing, so he thinks for a few minutes longer.  This situation  _is_ different than he’d anticipated,  but so far...huh. He’s okay with that. Wants to see where it goes. This’s a whole new  _world_ , after all; despite being full of familiar faces,  hers is certainly new.  Might as well try and get cozy with the locals, right? Heh.

“there anything you think i’d be better off knowing?” he asks eventually. Her stubbornly mysterious smile remains so as she answers.

“The monsters here are not as attuned to scent as you expect them to be, since it is unlikely most of them have had their survival depend on it,” she says, filling Red with incredulous, icy heat. “It’s doubtful they will detect your discomfort unless your magic sheds, or you make it known to them deliberately. If you require privacy, a tablecloth can be requested at the bar. Additionally, the door at the end of this wall,” she indicates the one her booth is joined to, “is a human toilet with a door that locks, and may be used as well. Within reason.” 

Lola scrapes the money off the table.

“Thank you. Next time will be half that.”

Red almost manages to wait for his hands to stop shaking before he slaps another ten on the table. Boss’ll be pissed but he’s too fucked up to care. Who is she, that she thinks she can just _say that_? Is she…? Red can’t control his breath anymore, so he stops. He checked every monster on the way in (a few of them gave him dirty looks, but he’s pretty good at flinging em right back), but it’s not….not like….

“who the fuck _are_ you?” he whispers at a volume she shouldn’t be able to hear.

“The fourth oldest living monster,” she answers evenly. “I am a ghost haunting my own body, and I have survived my children.” She smiles, and her hand comes up very, very slowly. Red can’t look away from it. It’s like watching an icepick hovering over his own sleeping body from the outside.

“_z__ertrümmert__!_” she hisses, plucks viciously at something he can’t see; he starts hard enough to rattle. Edge tilts his skull across the room to check on Red in the mirror when he hears it, but Red still can’t look away from Lola.

H e can’t.

“…_a__lle __b__ande der __n__atur_,” Lola whispers as he sees the sharp thing again, flashing across her unfocused gaze like an invisible razor.

Red shudders hard again, like the icepick struck home somewhere nonvital. His brother’s pretending he doesn’t see him over here forking over fistfuls of G to a bun-slip who isn’t even leading him off somewhere. Like he knows Red’s fucked up, and why.

It gets him a little red around the edges.

He looks back at Lola, his heart filled with boiling rage as he forces breath through his nasal aperture.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Lola informs him blandly. “For your sake.”

Red’s had enough.

He does it anyway.

Lola

LV: <strike>//\\\//\\\ </strike><strike>(be afraid)</strike>

AT: 10 (sharp)

DEF: 5 (steady)

HP: 500 (consistent)

* She heard what you did to get here.

“I _did_ warn you,” she says dryly as Red feels his eyes disappear. Edge stirs momentarily before settling his ass right back down.

Of course he’ll let Red handle it, despite the fact that. Ya know.

Red’s been sitting here _propositioning_ a fucking _assassin_.

Lola smiles at him sweetly as he chokes on silent terror, twenty or thirty sheets to the wind. Her LV’s so high he can’t even see it. He can’t imagine what would have happened if the determination had hit someone like _her_, she must have--

Red’s soul quails as her hand rises again. He doesn’t flinch, but it’s close. He forces stillness into his body, doesn’t breathe as she snatches something he can’t see out of the air.

She brings it down in front of her face, thumb and forefinger held apart like she’s studying something carefully.

“_There_ she is,” Lola says warmly as the space between her fingers shrinks. “Put down by Grillby thirty seconds after they were absorbed. Thirty seconds too late. There were no survivors.” Her thumb and forefinger touch, rub together suggestively.

“how much?” It’s Red’s shaky whisper, the only thing he can think to say to that.

“For you?” She looks up at Red, same pleasant expression as before. “Oh… you’ll _pay_. You’ll pay and you’ll pay until you both end.”

Red can’t look away from the rings of color in Lola’s eyes. This’s no _bunny_. This is a fucking demon snake from hell.

He hears your voice too late.

_They’re all like that._

…_Are you behaving, Lola?_ Grillby apparently showed up without Red noticing while he was hypnotized.

“No,” she replies calmly. He sets a full glass on the table in front of her, and she takes it to sip slowly. Red jumps, but all Grillby’s done is set a glass on the table in front of Red as well.

_...On the house._

Red looks up, finally realizing there are tears running freely down his face. Red’s sure they can smell his terror, along with the painful sexual arousal that_ hasn’t fucking gone_ anywhere. There’s no judgement in Grillby’s face. Just… polite sympathy.

“Apologies,” Lola says, and Red jumps again, his gaze snapping back to her as he swipes at his face with a shaky mitten. Then the threat’s gone as quickly as it arrived, vanishing between one sip and the next. “He mistook me for a prostitute.”

_...Ahh._ Grillby nods sadly, turns back to Red. _…Monsters do not do that sort of thing anymore, __for the most part__. __Sans was correct in bringing you here, I think. Although mistakes cannot be unmade, room can be made to allow their balance or correction. _

Grillby doesn’t ask where Red’s from or how he got here. He doesn’t ask what he said to her, or what she said to him.

…_If you drink this, I will bring another free of charge __if you request it_, he says instead.

He leaves while Red wipes his magic away into his mittens. Once he’s done he takes them off and puts them back into his phone.

Then he drinks. He should have known from the smell that it’s Grillby, but that nostalgic taste carves his spinning skull like a lathe.

His terror shifts away from him, and he waits to see what new mood his soul supplies.

“They appreciated it.”

Red looks back at Lola helplessly.

“What you did. Who you were to them. The kindnesses unseen did not go unheard, and they would have remembered you fondly. So I will remember for them, but I will not do what you expected to pay me for.”

Red stares at the tabletop, trying to breathe. Because even now, he’d still go with her. The obvious fact that he’d never get up again only adds to the appeal at this point. His pelvis _aches_, the magic holding it together dying to shed if he thinks about it too hard. Red’s caressing his own teeth with a suddenly mittened hand; he shudders, snatches it down.

This isn’t happening to anyone else. Even his brother’s fine; Edge wouldn’t be able to hide something like this. He hears your voice again, warning him about hidden threats. All the danger he won’t see coming. And Sans, right before heading back to get up to whatever the hell humans....

_think i’ll leave the dirty work to you_

Red’s breath shudders out, cold fear in his skull losing the war against the roiling heat he’s sitting on. He’s seen those videos and magazines fallen down in the dump. Humans are some perverted, nasty fuckers. Maybe you’re _doing_ something to him, rubbing his face in it. Some sick human thing, fucking him up without even touching him. Trying to teach him a lesson, pour him on the floor in front of everyone.

Red’s in hell. Did the unthinkable for nothing because _this is fucking hell_. He really thought this was the place to be, the place to go. The place they’d be safe. Instead, he’s being made the butt of some kind of depraved joke--

“You are sans,” Lola whispers, so quietly Red’s sure no one else can hear. His name pronounced the way he’s only ever heard in his own voice. “And he… does not, so none will suspect. The door locks, and no one will know. And if they do,” she places her hand flat on the table, at the periphery of his primary vision, “I will make sure they do _not_.”

“why?” Red hiccups bitterly.

“Because _we’re all like that_,” Lola whispers.

Red keeps his gaze on his feet as he stands and heads to the human bathroom. Lola can say what she wants about scent; there’s nothing in Red that can believe this is anything but a walk of shame, everyone in here getting a ripe noseful of Red’s little problem. Like they don’t know exactly what he’s about to do once the door shuts behind him. At least he manages to hold his magic in until it does.

Red avoids the mirror and walks right up to the seat with the tank on the back. He throws a leg over facing it, elbow on top of the tank, and rests his face in the crook of his arm. He puts on his softest mittens. His phone contains hand coverings by the dozen in various quality, cleanliness, stages of repair. If he’s gotta do it, might as well do it right. One goes over his face to catch the magic there; the other goes down the front of his shorts.

His breath gushes out of him as he lets himself _think_ about what he’s been feeling this entire time. Unimaginable softness, gentle touches, an insistent throbbing building to _need_ between his femurs.

Red shudders; he hasn’t really had any privacy in...

...a long time.

That’s the thing, though. He’d checked, and he can’t quite manage to convince himself that Lola can’t still hear him. _He_ can still see _her_, after all. He’s been vigilant so long he can’t always turn it off anymore, even when he wants to. And the last thing he wants to do is check the back room. So he just lets his tertiary vision rest on Lola as she stares at the wall and drinks, as he tries to be as quiet as possible.

“m’sorry,” he whispers into one mitten, then does his best to stifle his short huffing sounds as he starts to move the other. Warmth gushes free as soon as he starts, overflowing and filling Red’s nasal cavity with his own sad desperation.

It doesn’t take long after that. Red curls up tight for a quick second before he’s jerking helplessly into his own touch, a thready moan leaking hot through the strap of cloth-covered bones across his mouth. He wants to cry, then realizes he already is because the need isn’t _gone_ after he comes. It’s worse. This feeling’s still happening and he wants _more_; he wants to go again.

Red’s not even fantasizing. It’s like whatever this is, whatever’s happening to him right now is enough. It’s too much. He’s half-gone in a vertiginous dream of insistent movement; he presses his face hard against his hand like he wants something there, like it _does_ something. His jaw aches with the need to move it, but he’s used to the pain of his permanently frozen mandible. No...it’s like...he wants to _taste_ something in there. Wants something...in his mouth? Red shudders hard, pants hard into cloth until he can taste his own breath, sucks the heat back in through the cracks in his teeth along with spent magic from his sockets. He moans with his own dirt-sweet taste, for the touch of his own desperate hand.

It changes again right when he’s about to get there, a choked sound of defeat ringing in his skull. He keeps going, that rocking sensation happening some more, and then…ohh. His eyes churn like a washing machine inside his skull, sockets closed tight around them. Insistent-impending, unfurling waves of overwhelming urgency until he can hear his bones rattling against porcelain. Like he’s about to come, but _more_. He sobs as he soaks the mitten yet again, and now it’s all over his shorts, too.

Red gasps, can’t hold in his strangled grunt as he comes so violently his whole body jackknifes; he flinches as his skull hits the tank of the toilet he’s hugging like it’s the last fuckbuddy on earth. And then he starts weeping in earnest, because the urgency’s finally fucking _gone _from inside him, but his clothes and bones are saturated with it.

Red regains control of his shaky limbs in time to wipe his ankles with his shorts hem before it soaks the canvas of his shoes. He wipes the seat, too, but the scent lingers. Oh, lovely. The bottom of his shirt’s wet as well. He’s going to have to change, but it might not help all that much. Whatever. At least it’s over. Red goes to the mirror, doesn’t flinch. He’s used to it.

He ignores the sink; it’s water from the surface, and he already knows from the structure it won’t do jack shit about Red’s little accident. His fingers unerringly find a small but not hidden latch; there’s a relatively shallow cupboard with shelves in it behind the mirror. Neat little rolls of small cloths line them. They’re lined up pristine and tidy; left here unlocked where anyone could wander in. Like no one could possibly _dream_ of fucking it up.

The sight tugs hard at the embedded fishhook of shame in his soul; resentment pours out of the hole it tears open.

Red steals every last cloth and puts all of them into his phone. All but one, which uses to scrub vindictively at the rest of the magic on the inside of his pelvis after letting his soaked shorts hit the floor. His eyes flicker.

His hand slows, then stills as he sniffs the air. He brings the cloth up to stare at it, sniffs that as well.

Then he wipes his face too, tears the rest of his clothes off and shakily wipes _all_ his bones dry, because this cloth’s covered in something that just….eats the scent.

It’s _gone_, like it never existed. Like none of this ever happened, and no one has to know. Like _he_ doesn’t even have to know, and then Red has to take a minute to plop his rattled barebones ass down in the pile of his soiled clothing, catching strangled sobs and spent magic right in the little square of soft, forgiving cloth. His tears of shame, terror, and relief disappear as soon as they become not-him, catharsis without consequence.

The searing rage, the absolute conviction that someone’s _doing_ this to him slowly eases apart despite him, because this cloth exists. There’s no way these are here for _him_, and humans don’t have any magic; these cloths are obviously for monsters. For...anyone? Is this… is this just something that _happens_ here?

Crying naked on the floor of a human bathroom after having made thorough love to its toilet, Red finally, _truly_ accepts he has no idea what the fuck is going on.

Red’s killed a lot of people, and he’s done much worse than that, too. He’s not a good person, and he’s always gotten exactly what he deserves. He’s made sure of that. But to be brought low in such an unexpected and humiliating way, only to find evidence that such a circumstance…can be accommodated? Something unthinkable happened, but it’s as if it’s been provided for, somehow. Provided a place to hide his shame, and a way to clean it up.

_(_ _Although mistakes cannot be unmade, room can be made to allow their balance or correction._ _)_

Red shudders, utterly unnerved.

He’s probably feeling LVvy and stressed; with so much fucked up shit happening so close together the paranoia got the best of him. Getting knocked off his keel always goes right to his crotch, and Red shoves the why of that right back where it goes. He huffs bitterly, eyes unfocused with introversion. He really had himself half convinced humans are using telepathy to make him die of boners for a minute, but hey. He’s had worse. A lot worse. (<strike>Maybe the difference between paranoia and reality actually</strike><strike>_ matters _</strike><strike>here?</strike>) Red crushes any ghost of hope trying to make its traitorous way into his soul. In his experience broken shit can be useful but it _can’t_ be fixed, and they don’t get any more broken than Red and his brother.

Red puts his magic-soaked clothes back into a slot in his phone, then takes out the cleanest ones he has to spare, which aren’t very. He definitely keeps the scent-absorbing cloths, even the one he’d used already. Doesn’t seem like it’s run out of juice yet, and Red knows better than to throw away useful objects.

Red puts on his new duds, takes a deep breath and looks in the mirror. Grillbz can’t prove shit; _anyone_ could’ve come in here.

And hey, look. He even _washes his hands_, useless surface water and all. Red’s a perfect guest, and the shortstack can eat shit.

Red shuffles his way back to Lola’s booth, trying to ignore the way his brother’s shoulders lower in relief once he comes back into view. There’s another glass of Grillby at the spot he was sitting before, but Red just puts that right in his phone, too. Damn. He might have to add a few boxes at this rate. Then Grillby himself minces excitedly back over to this booth, and Red can’t stop hunching in on himself guiltily. He forces stillness into his body again, beams his most charming grin at the resurrected, washed-out specter of the worst mistake Red ever made. He can’t smell a thing, and he’s--

…_Did you enjoy your time in the bathroom?_ Grillby asks brightly, sending a shard of ice directly into Red’s soul. He manages to keep his foci open by the skin of his teeth. _…I’ve got a survey algorithm for improvements, and I was wondering if you could tell me what moved you to visit it?_

“There are no human facilities where Red comes from, of course,” Lola says smoothly, voice warm with the kind of amusement he’d expect if that were true. Not the kind taunting him for being a filthy, pathetic little worm rubbing out his own magic with no one to taste it but a toilet. “He was curious.”

… _Almost everyone is,_ Grillby says with bright pride, then pulls his phone out of his pocket to check a message. _…I’ve only had rave reviews! If you like, I can even--_

Red knows exactly what that wave of near-white moving through Grillby’s face means, although the strangled noise he interrupts himself with could make a barely-sentient rock blush. And if that wasn’t enough, Red does his best to keep his expression neutral as Grillby’s magic oscillates so hard Red can _see_ the lambent wave of it fluttering so high it peeks above his bowtied collar.

…_I’ll._ Grillby’s still staring at the message. _…Um. Be back shortly--_

He turns without even a last look at Red and practically _runs_ to the back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen (Hell’s Vengeance boils in my Heart!)  
Tod and Verzweiflung flammet um mich her! (Death and Despair blaze around me!)  
https://youtu.be/OLlux8ICOfI  
(Please hire Diana Damrau to chew the scenery crosseyed at my gravesite)
> 
> WE HAVE NO HEADS:  
https://youtu.be/wbeLu_3Wf_k
> 
>   
It would appear our Fell-ows have some serious stigma around perfectly normal bodily functions!
> 
> The way monsters use magic to express their emotions is something I extrapolated from canon. Once I input the info that everyone would be having mostly unpleasant emotions in a Fell setting… that’s the cultural effect that pops up from the worldbuilding convection oven in my brain.  
Then of course the constant threat of potential violence would lead to them being very _attuned_ to scent, ramping up the stigma around shed magic even more. Non-Fell monsters really don’t notice it that way unless the emotions are jarringly intense, or their face is like rrright up in there. Although some of what they’d call ‘intuition’ is probably vaguely related to scent input, they are very Polite.
> 
> The cloths that left such an impression on Red are the same ones from Sans’s night terror case; the ones with the scent-erasing substance Grillby makes. That’s where he keeps the extras.


	4. lunch rush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deftones – No Ordinary Love  
https://youtu.be/x1hwitltOQ4\
> 
> [wholesome fucktimes, discussion of minor sex accidents and sexual dysfunction]

You suck in a waking breath, and when you manage to get your gritty eyes open you can see fire through bone.

“How’s he doing, Grillby?” you grunt rustily.

… _I __kept__ him from waking you_, he reports, flames runneling idly over Sans’s still-sleeping skull. Your pain’s not horrible, although moving wouldn’t be happening if you didn’t need the bathroom Grillby’s so weirdly proud of like immediate-style.

You sigh in acknowledgement, rub your eyes. You rummage around in the bed, find someone’s shorts and pull them on.

“Be right back,” you sigh, grab your toothbrush-and-meds bag, and head to the bathroom via the main room. Lola waves at you without turning around when you open the fire door, and the brothers under table 9 ignore you. You can hear the barest rumble of Red speaking quietly.

“Hey,” you croak at Frisk, feeding their child, Sariel, at far end of the bar. Apparently they found some cheese fries behind the counter somewhere; knowing Grillby, he probably left them out for just this circumstance. Their glittering irises look incongruously sad above their smile as the door to the bathroom shuts behind you.

You summon your viewer to check the time; you don’t have any appointments for a few days, so you can just work from Grillby’s for a bit if you need to. You take your meds, perform your ablutions, do your business, and end up feeling both out of sorts and like everything’s stubbornly normal.

When you leave the bathroom you notice the brief glitter of silver buckles and studs under Table 9, along with two pairs of reddish points that can’t seem to decide if they want to stare at Frisk, you, or Sariel more. Well, you’re going over there anyhow, so they can get their eyeful all at once.

“Good, um...” you gesture, realizing it’s not really ‘morning’. “Hi. Decided to come see the under-the-table trolls yourself?”

Frisk smiles, their black irises glittering before going soft as they shake their head. “Sariel was hungry, and I didn’t feel like cooking,” they gesture, effective enough even one-handed. “Not much to see, anyways.”

You glance at the quiet dark under the table. Fair enough.

“They’re afraid, and also not very nice,” you try. You’re not so sure it’s the greatest idea to bring a baby here with those two. Although explaining this situation is definitely beyond you, Frisk doesn’t seem like they’re asking for one.

“Afraid?” Frisk gestures curiously.

“Of the sky,” you say, “and pretty much everything else? It scares me, because they’re…” You’re not sure what words to use. “Powerful?” you try, and Frisk just nods.

“That’s how monsters were when we first got to the surface. Even some of the ones who remembered from before.” Frisk sighs heavily, watches you feed a few more fries to Sari. Their mouth opens to accept your tithe of french fry, and their teeth gnash cheerfully enough as they make it disappear. You stare shamelessly, since between Sans’s fused mandible and Papyrus’s intermittent neurosis about being seen eating, their unselfconscious enjoyment is kind of a novelty. Also they’re a baby and it’s cute.

“You’re cute,” you sign, then gasp when purple and dark blue iridescence ghosts across their tiny zygoma as they grin. You wave at Frisk’s peripheral vision. “Did you see that?” you gesture excitedly. Frisk nods proudly.

“I think they understand a little,” they fingerspell faster than anyone else you’ve ever known has been able to, then feed Sari the last cheesy fry. “Not words, though. Something else.”

“You’re a good parent, Frisk,” you assert, saying their name aloud as you point (you) for emphasis. They’re used to your hearing-person idiosyncrasies by now, but the praise makes them duck their head and blush. “I’m going back to bed,” you add, shivering in a pair of (what you’re realizing are Sans’s) shorts in the chilly main room. Grillby usually keeps the temperature low, since he lives here.

“And I’m taking off,” Frisk says, then stands up and lifts Sariel to their chest. “I’ve got Papyrus’s car for the day, so I’m going over to Endogeny’s.” They pull up the soft little hood their onesie has built in, so the wind outside doesn’t blow into their skull. They spread their scarf over as well, just to make sure. You make the short, paired gestures that mean “MK’s arms for the day?” and they reply with the name signs for Dogamy and Dogaressa. You smile and nod. Frisk gets on well with them, although their gossip’s a lot sharper than even many monsters can handle. Frisk loves it. Speaking of which.

“Are you working from here this week?” they ask, cheekily glancing at your (Sans’s) shorts.

It’s your turn to blush. “A few days, yeah,” you say, then shiver again. “Bye,” you say, then scurry back to the fire door and through the slightly warmer kitchen, fleeing their soft little huffs of knowing laughter. That’s _Sans’s_ kid, alright.

You hear the deep rumble of Sans muttering to Grillby before you open the door; Grillby’s gentle crackles become audible after you open it and clamber back in bed. You search the sheets for a warm shirt and pull it on, shivering. It’s colder in rooms Grillby’s not also in, and you’d lingered with Frisk longer than you planned to. Your shoulders are starting to loosen up already, but you crawl under the blankets eagerly and wriggle into Sans’s back to plaster yourself nearer Grillby’s heat with a moan.

_...__Chilly?_ Grillby asks with soft amusement.

“Yeah,” you admit softly. “You’re pretty,” you add, just because you know it’ll make him—yep, there it goes. A white-yellow paleness flows from his center, slow and lambent. It’s almost hypnotic as it wavers out toward the edges of his body, where it turns slightly purple. Naked in bed, Grillby’s a pile of pure fire, limbs more suggestions than anything until he uses them. Like now, a hand caressing Sans’s sleepy skull tenderly while he does his purple version of blushing at your direct, sincere compliments.

“s’true,” Sans adds quietly to see the process repeat itself. “sure you don’t wanna take it easy today?” Grillby eases away slowly; Sans’s arm drags out with him. The pale bones of his hand come to rest loosely on the sheet as Grillby lets it go. Then he pauses, flames flickering over those bones lingeringly. As if the offer’s more tempting than he expected.

…_I’m going out __to get ahead of__ the lunch rush in just a minute_, Grillby decides. As far as you can tell, having someone take shifts to cuddle Sans between rounds of fucking so he doesn’t have to keep the bar closed during the day might be the best thing that’s ever happened to him. _…Do you want __me to make you __anything __before I get slammed__?_

“It’s still too early for me,” you yawn instead of making a joke about Grillby getting slammed, then wrap your arms around Sans as Grillby slithers out from between the sheets and onto the floor. The hot bones turn in your arms to hug you back, and Sans snickers filthily anyhow while you watch Grillby get dressed. It’s kind of a cool process; clothes sucked up into getting-taller fire, then just sort of ….are filled by it. Then all at once there’s a dressed Grillby walking over to his fireproof shoes and the table by the door he keeps his prop glasses on.

“hope it’s not too early for _me_ ta get slammed…” Sans whispers into your neck, making you shiver hard as you warm up the rest of the way. Grillby laughs as he dons his ridiculous spectacles, does a little flicker-wink as he opens the door.

_...__I’ll __wait for__ a message before I come back __in_, and then he’s gone before _you_ can get a comeback in.

Oh, well. You’ll get your revenge on him one way or the other. And in the meantime there’s a horny pile of hot bones in your arms, already nuzzling in your neck and helping himself to a handful of butt up the leg of your (his) shorts. There’s still ambient, directionless light in here after Grillby’s departure steals the dramatic shadows, same as Sans’s bedroom when the lamp’s not on. Neutral magic lighting, although the way the shadows dance when the bed’s full of fire adds a hypnotically sexual atmosphere to the room. It had last night, for sure.

After about six hours of sleep you’d woken up and had some snacks, then shared souls with Sans and Grillby for a little while before falling asleep again for… quite some time. When you pull Sans close against you now you can feel his soul’s resonance, still seething full of his magic that he’d pushed in. You give him a little kiss on his maxilla, them lean back to gauge the depth of the deep furrows beneath his sockets.

“How was your sleep?”

Sans’s mouth twitches sourly, lets your ass go with a final squeeze and slides that arm around your waist. “s’been better,” he sighs, then shrugs and relaxes. “least grillbz took care of it, got some rest after.” Grillby would have told Sans that Grillby had used the case under the bed as soon as he woke up, since that’s one of the conditions of having it in the first place. You have one just like it, and the third is with Alphys although she’s apparently never used it. Sans’s hard, flexible hand moves to your hip. “this seems a lil better.”

“Yeah, I took my meds.”

“you, uh.” he leans in for a slow nuzzle, a shared breath. “feelin’ up to a lil exercise, maybe?”

You can help glancing at the door. “Maybe?” Sans just looks amused. “I definitely want to stay in bed.”

“s’okay if you don’t wanna. but he’s not gonna come back in til i send a message.” Sans touches his phone, closes his sockets. He’s never really been able to explain to you how he checks his messages without looking at them; something about seeing the shape of magic that they’re made of. Sans chuckles and opens his sockets.

“guess it happened again,” he says.

“The Big Weed?”

“mmhmm.” He sets his phone aside on the little table-bookshelf Grillby put there after the second time you’d stayed over in a sexy way. This is actually only the third or fourth (you think). Monsters can always feel other monster’s souls if they’re exposed nearby, and it’s extremely relaxing for them. It’s highly encouraged to go off somewhere private nearby and do soul things by yourself or with partners on holidays, or at places like Grillby’s and Muffet’s cafe. It’s part of why the customers go there, if they’re monsters at least.

And as you’ve all found out over the past few years, adding human souls into the mix in certain interactions can make it affect humans as well...and makes the effect a lot stronger on monsters. The…mood? Eh, close enough. The mood it creates is different depending on who’s doing it, but it always seems to affect everyone in the same building as whatever’s going on.

It’s definitely not a _sexy_ aura or anything. You and Sans together just make people sleepy, for the most part. Angie and Toriel...well, that one’s kind of weird and hard to quantify. Festive? Sans always ends up baking and cussing, and you can’t stop playing board games when they’re up to something upstairs. Frisk and MK make everyone extremely disinclined to talk, and also kind of...sad? Nostalgic? You’ve felt it, and you still have a hard time describing it. You always end up listening to music on headphones and staring out the window for hours.

It turns out the effect of you, Sans and Grillby having your souls exposed at the same time makes people very relaxed, easily amused, and oddly likely to wax philosophical. In other words, very much like smoking a good old fashioned joint. Monsters always end up toked into oblivion, according to Lola’s reports.

“I hope that helped them,” you sigh.

“lola thinks they slept.” Sans slithers his naked bones against you, glides his ribcage against your chest some more, rubbing his face on yours and sighing with cuddliness and desire. The latter of which is also evident at the front of his pelvis, hot and resistant but as of yet, still mysterious. You offer your thigh for him to rub against, and he takes you up on it eagerly.

“’m kinda takin’ a break from thinkin’ about it,” he murmurs thickly. His breath shudders out as he grinds on your thigh with increasing vigor. Your eyebrows lift as he grabs your butt again for hump leverage with one hand, the guides your mouth to his vertebrae shamelessly with the other. For him, this is downright throwing himself at you in a frenzy of sexual energy.

Vanilla sex for monsters doesn’t actually involve exertion, so he’s not tired from sharing souls. Other than some petting during foreplay to encourage their magic to agitate and shed, once their souls are out they mostly just lie or sit there and look, touch, or push magic inside as they choose.

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” you whisper into complex bone, lick it, then pull back to let him shiver. You take the opportunity to waggle your eyebrows at him, palming the dense knob of his femur as you nudge your leg at his hot pelvis questioningly, then replace it with your hand.

“mm…yeah,” he says, his rumble rich with interest. “might be something goin’ on in there. you gonna ask it if it wants ta come out for you?”

Sans often talks and thinks about his genitalia as if it’s a small, skittish animal whose trust must be earned. It helps him deal with the frustration and fear that can dog his most vulnerable moments…and at its worst, prompt self-hatred or attempts at self-harm. Sans had been subjected to severe abuse during his childhood, and even if he can’t remember it, his body takes steps to try and protect itself.

One of those steps had been sexual dysfunction that had lasted most of his life. Before you, his genitalia had only emerged a few times during extreme and unhealthy sexual encounters with humans he’d gotten hooked on during a really low point in his life. You’d been together nearly a year before you’d even known his integral magic _can_ form genitalia. Sans had thought it was some perverse side effect of what he’d been doing, and the close contact with the humans he’d been doing it with.

He had been pretty upset to see it again, to say the least. But after some time passed (and he took you up on your suggestion to explore it on his own), he’d decided to share it with you if you were interested and it continued to happen. It certainly had, regularly if not necessarily often. Plenty of times nothing happens, no matter how much he might want it to.

His genitalia is also different every single time it _does_ emerge. He doesn’t always feel like sharing it even if it comes out, and not all of the shapes orgasm. A few are human, lots of them have been types of genitalia different monsters have, but it can be shaped like just about anything. Including a few that had left you both at a total loss, and he’d been just as happy to shrug and ignore it.

You feel around his pelvis for where the extra warmth is coming from; most of his genitalia emerges from the joint of his pubic bones, but not all of them (a few even involve places other than his pelvis). It’s a little like playing hot-cold. Your hand journeys towards his pubic symphysis curiously, takes its time to coax out a rigid, modest length against its palm while you kiss and cuddle him.

Sans runs his fingers up inside your shirt until you shiver up with gooseflesh; his fingertips delicately avoid the parts of your chest that have nerve damage from scar tissue and feel weird when touched, then dandle teasingly across your belly. His carpals sliding along behind his spread fingers right up the middle of your chest draw a breathy, vulnerable noise from you.

Sans exhales shakily from his nasal aperture as you encircle the warm magic with your fingers, glide from the tip all the way down to where the resistance blends away into his pelvis. Thick at the base but tapered, a little shorter than your hand, and smooth without any bumps or bends. It’s too slender at the tip to be anything human, but that’s certainly no dealbreaker unto itself.

“Can I-” you start at the same time he asks, “you interested in-?”

You share a giggle.

“It's always nice when we’re on the same page,” you sigh fondly, moaning as he nuzzles your face, pressing teeth already hot with arousal against you. Pressing becomes nudging, his magic adding sexual intent that makes his touch feel penetrating. You enjoy every bit of it as you continue toying with his genitalia. It’s small and cute; almost as stiff as his bones except at the tip, where it’s softer. A good thing, considering if it wasn’t it’d be too pointy for your intentions toward it. You make a pleased little noise and squeeze it gently, and Sans echoes it with a soft grunt.

You let go to touch his ribs and spine, teasing and taking your time. The space between his bones is always darker than it should be based on whatever lighting he’s in, a haze more like heat-shadow than smoke. It blocks light from passing through too, even though you can usually see through it. But when his genitalia comes out the inside of his pelvis gets as dark as the inside of his skull, although it glistens very subtly with cyan and yellow when he moves.

You get a nice long eyeful while he leans up on one hand to visually asses his genital situation for a minute. He pushes the blanket away carefully, like he doesn’t want it to catch on anything. You can see why. This shape’s angled up sharply, pointing at the ceiling with its slender little tip. If Sans had the plump belly his magic mimics when clothed, it’d be flush to it.

“That looks like a _lot_ of fun,” you tell him eagerly, then hold your arms out to demand his return.

He wiggles back into your embrace with a happy little huff, shivers while you touch and look at his genitalia some more. This one noticeably resists being bent downwards at _all_. Hoo boy.

“Does it bother you when I do that?” you ask, indicating slight downward pressure.

“hmm...” He puts his thumb over yours, presses a little harder. Sticking straight out is about as low as it goes. “…nah,” he replies with a soft smile. “long’s you don’t force it or anything.” He encourages you to wrap your fingers around it, then pushes back and forth inside your loose fist.

“yeahhh…that’ll do it,” he says breathily.

You share a smile; there’s no guarantee the same kind of stimulation will work every time. There are some that look almost identical to you that feel completely different to him. You both give it a minute to see if it’s going to do anything, since some of them get little knobs or tendrils, bend or curl, or swell up at different spots. Usually he gets an inkling from the way they feel, although there _had_ been the rather sizable paired lengths that had waited until he put one inside you to flower out at the tip like a soft-stiff umbrella, greatly surprising you both. (And sure, you’d been stuck like that for almost an hour and a half…but once it became clear it wasn’t harming either of you, it had become a very _fun_ hour and a half. The other one didn’t want to be touched.)

As unfamiliar as they can be sometimes, they never look awkward on his body because they’re always _hi__m_. This is the same magic that always exists between his bones, extended outward like a three-dimensional shadow until it blends back around and into the rest of the heavy, warm magic in his pelvis. You can see his pubic bones dimly through it from certain angles, but you can never see the inside of his pelvic inlet itself when his genitalia’s distended there, no matter the shape.

“you like it?” he asks hoarsely, shivering hard and pushing forward into your touch as you nod. “thinking ‘bout putting it inside you, maybe?”

His face is tense with anticipation, and it’s easy to see how much he wants you. Fuck, that’s exciting. It always is when he gets urgent about sex, since it’s rare that anything can lift its head above his deep, abiding patience. You put your own hand down your shorts, find yourself already slick with arousal. You dip a fingertip inside, see if _your_ genitalia’s in the mood. His breathing’s already uneven; when his next exhale’s downright ragged you realize you’re making him wait for an answer, too. He loves that.

“Yeah,” you answer finally, then make a raspy, wordless sound as his smooth fingers slip inside your waistband and unerringly find the molten folds between your legs. “I sure am. See?” You giggle, palming his hand and humping into his bony touch; you kiss his teeth again. He nuzzles you back eagerly as you touch each other and yourselves at the same time.

“mm…love it when you get like this.” He could mean a lot of things, but it’s what he often says when he can tell you’re turned on. He waggles a fingertip at your soaked entrance so you can both hear how wet you are. “you gonna let me-”

He huffs in amusement when wriggle away from his fingers with a teasing laugh, then make him wait even more as you sit up. He kneels to touch himself while you disrobe, watching avidly and stroking the underside short-quick with the bones of his open palm. Sans touches himself differently than you do because his hands are different. His hard fingers can be too much on his most sensitive bits, but he almost always finds a way to make it feel good...or he just uses something soft to do it. You wonder why he’s using his non-dominant hand, then to your surprise he parts his teeth to wiggle a distal phalanx from the other hand between them.

Oh. It’s the one that’s still wet from your body, and his genitalia twitches visibly as he moans and shudders. He must have gotten lucky and part of your substance already converted to something he can actually taste. That can happen sometimes after you’ve been going at it together a while. Or maybe he just gets off on the attempt, who knows. Either way, he yanks his finger out with a little scrape and abandons his genitalia to reach for you with both hands the second you’re naked.

You draw him down on top of you as you recline, presenting your pelvis instinctively as he leans into you. Then you both gasp, because the maneuver starts to guide him right inside you before you’re even lying down all the way. The soft-slender tip parts your lower lips sweet as a first kiss, just barely dipping in like he wants to taste you with that, too.

“I’m ready,” you object as he pulls back and hesitates.

You’re still a little surprised when he gives in to temptation with a soft chuffing noise, the sudden, lazy weight of his bones pressing you down as his spine curves in a sinuous thrust. His body fills yours with thrilling pressure at a very exciting angle, the drawing resonance of his magic barely questioning your depths. It’s not blunt, but the soft tip bends or something, and…it’s interesting. Noticeable when he twitches inside you. He feels thicker here than in your hand, opening you wide but not enough to cause discomfort. You feel…extraordinarily penetrated.

His expression changes as you tighten down on him, and he gasps when you squirm around for more. Urgency floods his face, surprise flitting across his skull along with his iridescent magic. His smooth, flexible palm cups your cheek; his sockets narrow as he caresses it.

“babe,” he whispers shakily as he starts to move, “o-oh god, y-you--” You let out a short, high noise when he thrusts in again sharply; it doesn’t hurt, but you shift your legs and hips for a better angle. A soft-strangled moan emerges from his skull, and he looks at you with an intoxicating mix of wonder and sheepishness as he starts fucking you kind of hard right away. You have zero problemo with this turn of events, and you know if he’d seen anything but pleasure and yearning in your face while doing this, he definitely wouldn’t be.

“you like it?” he asks again anyhow, slowing despite your encouragement. He still looks conflicted, like this experience is already starting to get away from him a little. Need wars with anxiety in the shape of his sockets, and the points inside them are still bright and tense. You bring your hands up to stroke his face soothingly between them. At least he doesn’t stop, which is awesome because it feels really good. Intense and a little rough, like his body loves how you feel inside, clumsy with excitement to let you know.

“Do you want to come like this?” His pained expression eases somewhat at your question; his white eyes spread as his sockets ease and lengthen. Asking him ahead of time is usually a good call when he’s anxious, although this seems more than usual, even for him.

“think ‘m…y-_yeah_,” he admits breathily, then lets a wracking shudder take him. Mounting tension twines his bones, like wires pulling them taut with each insistent curve of his spine. A pleased growl escapes from the very depths of your throat. This shape doesn’t require as much restraint as he’s used to practicing when you have sex this way. But he’s breathing deep for control anyhow, slowing down in fits and starts. He’s still watching your face, so you give him a bawdy, challenging little smirk. He returns it, seeming heartened.

“’s that look for, huh? want me to do it hard?”

You sign “fuck me,” and nod furiously. Despite your enthusiasm, you can tell this quick ascent is making him nervous, like the rest of him needs to catch up to what his body’s demanding. He asks you to hold him, so you wrap your arms around heaving bones with a greedy little noise and pull him close. He buries his face in your neck, nuzzles in the way you like, and—oh, whoa. You let out a surprised, fervent groan as he takes you very much at your word.

You try feebly to match his frantic rhythm, then give up and just hold steady as he plunges his heated length into you faster than you can really keep up with. Its remarkable firmness and upright tilt is definitely doing something for you; hitting all the right spots like when he beckons with his fingers, gliding smoothly on your gratuitous slickness. Sans shifts slightly, then thrusts with a curving, wicked little hook of his pelvis at the end. Whatever sensation that gives him makes him cry out sharply. His hand comes down to grip your hip as he drives into you steadily that way, holding you in place to get a little deeper with each devastating twist of his pelvis. He keeps at it until you whimper a little at his roughness; his bones are softened by distended magic, but they’re still _in_ there.

“sh-shit; okay, okay...” he pants against your hot skin, easing up immediately and tracing a soothing caress over the dents where his fingers dug in. “...sorry,” he whispers, lifts his skull to look at you.

“You’re fine, Sans” you rasp, voice husky with pleasure as you slide your palm over his occipital bone lushly. “I’m into it. I _like_ when you get excited. Just try not to bruise my peehole with your pubis, ‘cause that shit burns later.”

“okay,” he breathes again, but still eases almost all the way out of you. “somethin’ else, maybe?” You shake a quick negative, hold him with your legs. “…more a the same?”

“Yeah,” you whisper throatily, caressing his broad, oddly catlike skull with your thumb over and over. It’s the thing you always say to him, what you want from life, from him. Just this. To be together, doing what feels good, whatever makes you both happy. “More of the same, _always_.”

He makes a tight, tender noise somewhere deep in his skull, closes his sockets almost like it hurts, but in a good way. He buries his face back in your neck, whispers shaky-sweet into your skin as he starts moving inside you again.

“...okay, darlin’. okay...” His hand creeps up to find its favorite place at the nape of your neck. He nudges at your jawline with his frontal bone, the warm nuzzle echoing his movements as his fingers work their patient way through your hair to your scalp. That always makes you shiver, makes you feel cared for and relaxed.

“s’okay,” he repeats absently, still petting your hip where he grabbed it. You can tell he’s talking himself through some anxiety.

“It’s good,” you say, and his voice breaks when you move languorously beneath him. You tent your legs out sloppily to the sides to accommodate his speeding movements, but hug him tight with your arms to keep him close and safe. Let him feel how your soul yearns towards him. How much you love him.

“I love you,” you pant for good measure, turning your face in to kiss the side of his skull. “Love when you share it with me, okay?” He makes a cracked-sweet noise into your neck, a delicate hitch like a spoon hitting the top of a crème brulee. He interrupts himself with it again when his magic spends inside you. His arms tighten as he grinds his hips gently, little circles to encourage its emergence.

“me too.” He huffs softly, shuddering in your arms. “love you…t-tell me, tell me if ‘m-”

“I’ll let you know,” you gush, start to circle your hips in a slow staccato to his increasingly frenetic thrusting.

“yeah, thass it…show me…” Sans finds a groove he can handle with your help, then lets out a low, grateful moan into the curve of your neck. He makes a softer noise as another layer of his magic sheds, adding his unmistakable spice to the heat and pressure.

The soft, slender tip of what he’s got inside you doesn’t press your limits with fullness the way some of them do, but instead it makes you...incredibly aware of its presence. In a way that just being pounded bluntly in there doesn’t, although that certainly has its charms. When he fucks hard with this there’s a deep, stimulating wiggle that was driving you out of your mind, especially with its sharp upward angle and remarkable firmness to squeeze down on. You want it back, and you try angling down to reduce the impact outside. Sans moans in surprise; sounds like he’s already close.

“jus’ like that….oh fuck, feels like—” He gasps as you swivel beneath him. “…stars ab_ove_…”

He needs this sometimes, needs to feel your body’s welcome along with his own pleasure. You keep up a soft, disjointed litany of encouragement as he winds up tight to withstand the storm of emotion and sensation your bodies can make together. You caress his shoulderblade with the inside of one wrist, then rub the places where his ribs join his spine with the fingers of your other hand. He moans as you curve your fingers in, wrapping your hand around his spine there and holding on. He shivers hard again when you try a firm squeeze, thumbing the resistant magic between his vertebrae as he speeds up again. Oh, there’s that deep wiggle, along with the rigid, pulsing thickness at the base stretching you over and over.

“oh, o-oh fuck…” There’s the faint zip noise of his hard fingers tightening suddenly in the pillow next to your head, then “h-here it comes,” quivery-emphatic like his body’s shaking the words out of him. The announcement’s mostly for his benefit. Saying it helps him feel like he knows what’s happening, that it’s something he’s doing. He says he’s going to, and then he does.

Bone fingers brace you again as he arches sharply, thrusting hard with a broken cry. He whimpers when he tries to pull back so he pushes deep and holds there, his climax shaking through his poised body instead of fucking you through it and continuing like he usually does. He lets out short, huffed noises as his genitalia swells and pulses hard at the base, a few tiny movements like a tender fingertip inside as he rocks against you helplessly. There’s a final throb as he shudders hard enough to clack, then he pulls out quickly with an overstimulated cough.

“All good?” you pant, and he nods against your shoulder where he’s bent over you, still shivering.

“s’ticklish,” he manages, out of breath. “c-can i, lemme jus’...” His fingers question your entrance, and you open into them eagerly. He moans louder than you do as his fingers penetrate and curl. He knee-walks in reverse, shimmying awkwardly down your body for a better angle, already mimicking the movements he’d fucked you with but gentler since his bones are harder. You were getting close when he came, but you take deep breaths to try and draw this out for a little while. It might be greedy, but he’s _seriously_ good at this. You don’t want it to be over too soon.

Then he presses his fixed grin right above his fingers instead of using his thumb there the way you expected, pulling a delighted cry from you. Sans’s mouth feels nothing like a human’s, and is also an unexpected treat. He doesn’t do this often despite how much he likes it, just because it can be time consuming to toothbrush your appreciation out of his face afterward. Well, you don’t have sex the way you just did very often either, and you know it feels special for him when you do. Seems he wants to keep the vibe going, even if it’s a little extra work afterwards. 

_God_ , he’s lazy. God, you  _love_ him.

He starts rubbing across with gentle pressure, the glassy-smooth nubbles of his teeth sliding back and forth across your twitching clit. He moans softly, and the texture turns penetrating as his desire to pleasure you delves deeper than flesh, his intent pushing magic between the atoms of your body. You hadn’t known that’s what it _was_ until relatively recently, but you always knew it felt good.

Your plans to hold _out_ may need to be modified considering your hands are already scrabbling mindlessly with the need to hold _on_, and you clutch your own ankles to keep from pawing at his bones. He’s too frail to take much yanking.

“Oh _fuck_,” you hiss, arching up so he can really get in there. You have to be careful for your own sake too; bone is _hard_, and you’ve gotten pinched by your own careless movements before.

You notice the light tingle his phalanges can get when he gets especially excited. It’s an involuntary light shed of magic he calls ‘coming in hot’ when touching souls, since it adds a significant intensity to the experience. You can feel it here because your mucous membranes are more sensitive to it. His fingers make a kind of slow circular motion pressed as deep inside you as he can go, and holy shit. Considering he can lengthen his fingers by separating his metacarpals from his palm, that’s saying something. With the tingle, it’s crossed the line to mind-blowing. He must have been saving this little trick for a special occasion or something… and if not, it is one _now_ because damn. You try and keep from pushing against him too hard, but you clench hard enough around his fingers to grate them as you let out a low, guttural moan.

Then he gasps, grips the side of your ass like he’s drowning. You look down at him in alarm, but he doesn’t stop or pull away.

“_babe_…” His voice wavers high against you with melting-sweet surprise, and the points in his sockets flare bright and hot. “y’taste like _me_,” he chokes softly, then lets out a growling moan so deep the vibration makes you cry out and arch into him.

Sans doesn’t have any ejaculate because why on earth would he, but he almost always sheds magic when you have sex. If you were a monster you’d be able to ‘taste’ his arousal in it, as well as emotions, intentions, even bits of his personality. What monsters call ‘taste’ in this context is actually a sense humans don’t have, but his magic has a nice spicy flavor to you when it sheds nevertheless.

You’ve done a lot of stuff together, but you don’t think he’s ever put his mouth here so soon after having his genitalia inside yours. The edges of Sans’s teeth are sharp; he keeps them tightly closed when they’re anywhere against you, but it must be enough of a mess down there it’s pushing through the spaces between them.

Because your body’s physical, Sans’s magic usually slips right into the spaces between the atoms you’re made of, but sometimes it takes longer to absorb. And from the sound of it, the feel of it, and the way he seems to be absently rubbing off on the bed, he is getting off on what his body’s left on and inside you to a remarkable degree. His other hand massages the outside of your hip with renewed urgency.

“’m still in here-” His voice breaks, and he changes the position of his fingers: curled upwards and beckoning insistently at the front wall. The intensity scatters your thoughts, those clever phalanges wiping your mind as you do an awkward little half a sit-up.

“s’like i can taste what we did…”

You groan, let your upper body fall back into the bed. His breath comes in cool gasps and hot puffs as you twitch against him wetly.

“think you c’n come in my mouth, darlin’? he rumbles. You’re already so wet you can hear it as he waggles the texture of his grin back and forth insistently, and you can’t help the slight buck of your hips. “ohh, _thass_ it…fuck my face.” You look down in surprise at him putting his filthy mouth to work, eyes fuzzed out wide in dazed, slit sockets. “yeah…wantcha to squirt right in here. fill me up with you n me all m-mixed together. i wanna taste how we were fuckin’…”

He knows it feels good when he talks while doing this, so he tends to just sort of narrate his thoughts. But yeah. This is some next level raunch, even for him.

“jus’ like that...” and he just _doesn’t stop_, keeps pressing and fingering and _talking_ and you’re so fucking close… “that’s it, babe…come for me… g-give me-, get it all over me. yeah, love it when you make a mess…” He moans raggedly; his voice wheedles out to a cracked whisper as he starts to _beg_. “please...” Oh, god. Sounds like he does when you use _your_ mouth on _him. _He loves to beg when you’re buried deep in his magic, fingers and tongue; when he’s all you can feel, all you can taste.

“…make me _taste_ it, darlin’, _please--_”

The way his voice breaks hard in the middle of his desperate plea sends you right over the edge. Pleasure ignites in you, white-hot like his eyes right before he closed them, wet wildfire from your core crashing against his urgent whispers. You can’t understand his words over the rush of blood in your ears but his voice goes high and shaky; sounds like something good’s happening for him down there, too. You shudder hard and start to come down, throat raw from sounds you don’t remember making.

“there you go…jus’ lemme...” Fingers from his other hand trace their complex way to your mound, spread you open and hold you still as you feel...oh. Wow. Sans’s teeth part the slight amount they’re able, the sharp edge moving carefully over your folds to gather the mingled slick there. He pulls back with an intoxicated expression on his soaked skull, lurches up and back to sit on his heels and starts moving his fingers inside you again. He reads your body like a neon sign: he knows he just lit the fuse to a whole string of firecrackers, and he can’t wait to make them explode one by one.

“Fuck, _Sans_,” you hiss admiringly. “You kinky bastard...” Your hips jerk up and down of their own accord as he works your body with expertise and patience, phalanges curled up and pulling from the shoulder. His eyes flare like superheated diamonds, then his sockets close around them as he tilts his skull back.

He groans from the depths of his soul as some of what’s in his mouth dissolves out into him. His other hand scrambles back to his own genitalia, ready again (or still) at the wide apex of his femurs. He gives it short, rapid tugs from the base, a totally different rhythm than he fingers you with, but he’s not looking at either. He’s utterly lost in whatever he tastes right now, in the sensations of touching you, of touching himself. His legs shake with intensity as you watch, awestruck by his monstrous beauty. The complex cradle of his pelvis is thick inside with the same heavy magic that projects out from his pubis. He clasps a living shadow that glints cyan-yellow between the tiny and perfect bones of his hands as he pleasures himself fitfully.

You sob his name again after a few minutes; his sockets open, white points flaring wide as he meets your gaze. “Fuck me some more?”

He pulls his fingers out quickly enough that you cry out, then again louder when he shoves the thick heat between his legs back inside you. His sudden, lazy weight pushes another gratified moan out, matched by him when you sloppily kiss the spiced iridescence from his skull. He palms your shoulders, nudging his forehead against you in a daze before leaning up with scrunched-shut sockets.

He thrusts sharply once, twice; the harsh little huffs of breath that accompany them raise gooseflesh where they hit your sweat. His huffs tighten, and so do his arms; he pulls back and slides home with that wicked little hook of his pelvis as you lift eagerly to meet him. Oh fuck; right there. _Yes_. Your body follows him as he pulls back, and you growl breathlessly when he thrusts sharp, hits the same spot again.

Something falls into place, and it’s different than before.

He figures out how to rock his magic-padded pubis on your clit with each curving thrust instead of pounding, you slow his movements by tilting down on his withdrawals. Just like that you fall into a deep, feverish rhythm together. You’re both beyond eloquence now, just broken affirmations as you move with each other. His earlier conflict smooths out to align with your urgency, and years of care and communication lock your bodies together like the teeth of a zipper.

His body’s always different, always the same. Always the skeleton you love.

You reach up and touch his pained expression, overcome with tenderness. He dips his skull to offer his face to you. You kiss yourself off his fixed grin eagerly, and your other hand slides up inside him to caress the inner surface of his sternum. He’s pressed so tight against you, you can feel your own soft flesh pushing into the spaces between his ribs. Sans moans hotly against your mouth as you stroke him inside. Love, bone and spice mingle, your lips and tongue numbed and sensitized by his magic.

When your tongue slicks across he nudges with _intent_; you feel the penetrating strength of his desire pushing into the space between your tongue. Then he opens for you with a breathless, vulnerable noise, teeth parting the small amount they’re able to let you into the narrow cleft of his mouth. A needy whine escapes you, joins your tongue to slip inside his sharp-edged sliver of private darkness.

He inhales both greedily; you’re lost in the gentle taste of each other as he mercilessly fucks you into the mattress. His skull presses closer, the point of his nasal bone moving against your cheek with his exertion. He takes your lower lip between his teeth, so careful even as he increases the pressure, or wait, this is..._oh_.

He’s touch-pushing from the edge of his teeth, pulling back slow with delicate precision to make the tingle even deeper instead of nipping. A smooth bone arm slides across your shoulders underneath to steady them. He tilts his face against yours and does it again. Slower now as his thrusts speed up, huffing hot breathy rumbles of his voice into your mouth.

You’re so close your legs are shaking too hard to control; his hand fumbles down to grab your ass hard, bracing you to sharpen the angle of his penetration to something devastating. He releases your lip, opens his teeth for your tongue with a thready moan. The contrast of gentleness above and roughness below is unbearably poignant; tears start in your eyes because you don’t want this to ever end. Everything else ceases to exist until it feels like all there’s ever been is _him_, is _you_; an endless universe of _this_.

Monsters might call this kind of sex “just bodies” because your souls aren’t involved, but there’s nothing “just” about it.

He gasps raggedly when he feels you tighten down on him, pulls away so suddenly your tongue catches the sharp edge of his teeth, a bright pinch of pain where the gap between them narrows. You clamp your lips shut to make sure he doesn’t see if there’s any blood. Your moans turn nasal and plaintive as a result, but you don’t mind at all because you’re coming.

You mind even less as he kneels up, puts his hands behind your knees and holds your legs open wide so he can watch you come all over him, pelvis canting upward instead of back and forth. The noise he makes is raw and ragged while he watches every few thrusts he gives you coax out small amounts of pearly fluid from you to runnel down toward his ischium. Waves of heat are rolling through you, thick pulses of sensation pierced over and over by his thrumming shaft. It feels so good it doesn’t stop where you end, overflowing until it drips to the bedding. It ebbs, but barely.

You’re already shivering up tight again as he lurches back down onto you. His elbows end up behind your knees, arms curled around to hold your shoulders, too. He’s got you folded up in a compact little fuck-package, giving you everything he’s got over and over. He holds his breath for a long time, shaking harder and harder until it feels like he might just fall apart. He gasps in air just as you’re about to reveal your wounded tongue to ask if he’s okay, his thrusts stuttering wildly.

“’_m coming_,” Sans hiccups loud and sudden, then makes a high, strangled moan through his teeth you don’t think you’ve heard before. Makes sense since he’s never announced an orgasm in the present tense before, either. Apparently he wants you to know he likes this, that his climax feels good despite its unexpected arrival.

The way he’s holding you makes you feel each little pulse and throb so keenly it almost sets you off again. You yelp in mixed joy and frustration as it you lose the foothold on your summit; his moan breaks apart into smaller “_oh_” sounds as he fucks you over his. Then considerably beyond it. His short little “oh”s are actually pretty funny, and you make a note to do an impression of it for him when you’re not so pleasure-drunk you can barely see.

“’m gonna-- oh_h_,” he chokes, shedding magic thickly inside you. He lets out a wordless sob, presses deep and grinds in a circle to savor its release. “gonna do that thing you like,” he finishes, panting and shaky-legged with the unaccustomed amount of exercise. “you want me to?” He slits open his sockets, looks awfully satisfied by your breathless nod. He generously gifts you your own legs to hang on to for him as he kneels again, then his hand darts down and goes to work.

He’s holding his genitalia in his hand and moving it in rough circles inside, then pulling out to do the same outside. Considering there’s about two inches at the tip that just slickly flicks around before the part where it gets hard, it feels considerably different than ones that are blunt and broad at the tip. Just as good though, with an added element of novelty. He circles insistently, alternating inside and out until he grabs your ass with a low, breathless growl and drives back in deep. He thrusts with a quick-quick rhythm that makes your hips hitch up into him involuntarily, pounding in until your core’s a blur of heat-pressure-fullness and then---

He yanks out of you, and your entire being bucks along with your body as his abrupt cessation sets off the last firecracker in the chain. You shake like you’re feverish, clenching hard on nothing as your nasal moaning gains an impressive vibrato. Sans uses the heels of his hands to massage to either side of your violent orgasm, letting you push your entire pelvis into the pressure and deepening the sensations. It’s like a physical, cathartic grief that leaves you hollering and helpless every single time. You can feel your own delight dripping down the crack of your ass, flooding out hotly as a slender bone thumb flaps up and down your spasming cleft.

“ohhh, there you go,” he whines breathlessly as your mind-scouring pleasure recedes, “there you go...” He makes a sympathetic hitching noise in his throat like when he stops pushing magic; you hum through a series of closed-mouth sobs as he runs the smooth, delicate tips of his fingers along your trembling cleft, playing with the mess you made together. Lingering, even though he must be ready to fall over with exhaustion.

You can just see his face around your own knees clutched to your chest as your eyes open again. His expression looks almost as wrecked as you feel, still wet from earlier, sockets narrowed and teeth parted crookedly as if you’re shooting bright light out of your junk instead of wet orgasms. His shoulders heave with accomplishment, or maybe he’s just that out of breath.

You could die happy watching this view. Damn.

“ohh, babe...” The rest of his breath shudders out as he runs his palm lushly over your twitching folds; you jerk and yelp with overstimulation.

“now _that’s_ a fuckin’ _splash zone_,” Sans gushes fervently, giving your taint a playful (and wet) little spank-tap as he falls facedown next to you, felled like a tiny bone tree. He shifts, makes a little twitch and cough as his retreating genitalia rubs the bed. “…_phew_.”

You snort helplessly, you let go of your own legs and let them flop limply to the mattress.

“Mmm hmm,” you agree in a thoughtless singsong, and his skull pops up immediately to give you a suspicious look, despite his panting. It doesn’t take long for him to figure it out now that no one’s in a middle of an orgasm. Oops.

“_shit_,” he hisses in chagrin, his otherwise fixed grin flattening at the edges. “did i getcha, darlin’?” His damp fingertips pat at your face, trying to unfold your mouth and check for damage. You don’t let him. He bows his skull and grunts.

“…fuck. knew i was gettin’ carried away,” he mutters under his breath, face sagging with self-recrimination. “you’re bleeding, aren’tcha?”

You free your hands so you can sign at him quickly.

“_Barely_, okay? It’ll be done in a minute.”

He looks miserable now.

You widen your eyes at him, mouth adamantly sealed.

“Don’t you _dare_ pull that b-y-r-o-n-i-c bullshit on me now,” you gesture at him hotly. “I didn’t order post orgasmic guilt for dessert.”

“...hey,” he gripes meekly. “s’kinda mean.”

You stare him down, forcefully thinking about the conversation you’d had with him about the undue burden of reassuring him for 12 hours after ridiculously minor sex accidents. It's no one’s fault he’s hard all over and sharp in a few places, or that you’re a squishy bag of blood and meat just waiting to spring a leak. (<strike>His fear of blood</strike><strike>_ is _</strike><strike>probably Frisk’s fault, though. Parent</strike><strike>hood</strike><strike> is not without its pitfalls.</strike>)

He makes one of his dry skeleton noises and glances away for a second.

“Give me some water,” you demand archly.

His face softens a little, and he flops around to try and find where his phone went. Then he remembers he actually put it on the table, and that there’s a table there now. He rolls back over with it, and obediently produces one of his reused, ripped-labeled and battered bottles. It’s filled with the water from Waterfall. Once you drain it, if the bleeding wasn’t stopped by then it is now.

“See?” you say with your mouth. “All better.” Then you stick your tongue out at him, and he drums up a little smile for you, lying there extra akimbo and still sweatily iridescent from the unusual amount of exertion.

You stuff a corner of the fireproof comforter over his humerus and lie down on it with a mighty sigh of satisfaction.

“So, did that have some kind of special flavor or something?”

Sans’s mandible clicks against his collarbone as he looks down at you. “mm?”

“The magic you shed fucking me with your doodily-doo.” You point at where the now-amorphous shadow is creeping back between his pubic bones to hum contentedly until it decides to grace you both with its presence again. “Does it taste like fucking me, or was there something else going on?”

He gets a considering look on his face as you explain, then rasps his thumb distal around an orbital as he stares back up at the ceiling. Eventually he just sighs heavily, adds a dry skeleton raspberry-ish noise. Yours are better.

“guess i gotta think soft on that one.” He snorts, shoulders shaking as his sockets narrow in amusement. “wasn’t thinkin’ too clear for a minute there… dunno if you noticed. hee hee… heh.”

“Does begging me to squirt in your mouth count as a thought?”

“hey now,” he says, mock-offense dripping from his voice, “that ain’t a _thought_; that’s the deepest emotion of my soul.” He chuckles, rolls over to pull you into a tight hug. He grunts in satisfaction when you return it, then flops back with a sigh and returns you to his re-padded shoulder.

“mm. think i like it when you get real wet… cause i do it, too.” He continues before you can protest that his magic _literally_ has his thoughts and feelings in it; you just don’t have anything to (absorb-communicate) it with. “i know ’s jus’ saying that you want me, or… that it feels good, i guess? but it’s still saying so, and i like it.” He smiles at the ceiling with a happy huff. “it’s sexy.”

You get all hunchy inside, because his honestly demands reciprocation.

“Hey.”

He looks back at you mildly, but your suddenly guilty eyes flee his gaze.

“I was being mean because I was scared you wouldn’t kiss like that anymore. I’m sorry,” you whisper, shamed. He just waits. Eventually you get brave enough to look at him again. It’s not the expression you were expecting.

“you like it that much?” he asks quietly.

“Yeah, but that’s no-”

“we can still do it like that,” Sans interrupts, still quiet. “s’jus’...” he sighs, shifts his legs. “hard for me sometimes. i don’t wanna hurt you.”

“I know it’s complicated for you,” you acknowledge as patiently as you can. “But blood just comes out of me all the _time_, for like _no_ fucking reason.” You look at his face, like you can blast understanding into his...whatever. He doesn’t have a brain. Eyes? “I know you can’t help how you feel when you _see_ it, but…for fucks sakes, let me at least make sure you _don’t_ see it and leave the rest of it outside the door, okay?”

“…still being kinda mean, darlin’.”

“Sorry,” you mumble again. You curl up facing him, hide your face. “I’m bad at this. Sorry.”

Sans rolls over and curls up around you in turn, rests his chin on your hair almost like Papyrus does sometimes. He rubs your back, and you know he’s going to bring it up so you do it first.

“I mean...” You don’t like thinking about it, much less saying it. “Yeah, you can hurt me by accident. But I can _take_ it…and _you can’t_.” It’s a shivery whisper. “I’m more likely to just _kill_ you by accident. You’re taking a much bigger risk.”

“you didn't kill me, readz,” he says calmly.

You start crying like you both knew you would, because you accidentally pulled his hip out of the socket during sex a while back and that’s what this is really about. The fact that you’d skipped it _then_ always makes remembering it _now_ a little worse, but whatever. His genitalia had been out, which weakens the magic that holds his pelvis together more than it should because his HP’s so low. One of you had moved unexpectedly, he’d lost his balance or something, and that had been that.

He pets you gently as you remember his hoarse little scream into your shoulder. Not because of the pain, but because it had hurt badly enough to make him come. You can still feel his arm tightening hard so you couldn’t pull back and see the humiliated expression on his face as he came again pushing it back in. You’d swallowed bile as _he’d_ apologized over and over. Weeping and saying he was sorry, as if he’d done something disgusting by existing to be hurt at all in the first place. His genitalia had shed out completely, the scent of it increasing his upset. Once he got cleaned up and he had some food and water, he’d gotten a lot calmer.

The last thing you’d wanted then was to make him reassure _you_; he’d already been upset enough. But you probably shouldn’t have shoved all your feelings quite so far away that they turned into whatever _this_ is.

The incident is probably what also led him to confessing the full story of what had happened between himself and Duncan, the first human he’d fucked in the name of science. He’d showed you some places he could be hurt badly without permanent or fatal damage; that had been one of them.

That had been the night before last.

Months ago, and also….the night before last.

Shit.

You feel Sans’ glassy-smooth fingertips on your chest.

“gettin’ mixed up, darlin’?”

Ever since he started aging, his sense of time’s gotten solid enough it can help you get back on track. Sometimes he can do it just holding you, the resonance of his magic helping you feel the time passing in the same direction. When it’s gotten bad a time or two, he’s touched your soul along with you to help you feel more grounded.

“No,” you hiccup, then lean up and wipe your eyes with a shuddering exhale. “No, I’m pulling it back now.” He just holds and watches you. He knows you skip around sometimes. More than Papyrus does; you don’t check back as much. “How long have we been together?”

He huffs, sockets long and sleepy. “hmm...dunno. i think… next month’s four years since we met?”

You sigh again, nodding with increasing calm. “I’m….I’m good, I think.” You press your lips together, wipe your eyes on the pillow and cuddle back into his embrace. “I’m sorry. I’m always demanding you be honest with me, but then I’m not honest, and I keep giving you reasons not to be.” It’s a reluctant whisper by the end.

“nah. you jus’ had to take your time with it. think about it the way you do, an’...this was the time.”

“Love you.”

“love you too.” Sans shudders as he yawns hugely; the ‘huge’ part is the sound he makes, since his mouth doesn’t actually open. “speaking a which. ya get around to fuckin’ grillbz with me yet?”

You look away, but hold him closer. “Soon.”

His hum sounds both chiding and indulgent, but his voice is reassuring when he speaks. “it’s _good_, darlin’. nothin’ ta be worried about.” He gives you a big squeeze. “you c’n wait til you’re ready, though.”

“I am,” you mumble petulantly into bone, then lean up on your elbow when he suppresses another yawn.

Sans’s sockets have little beads of magic at the inner corners. You wipe them as they close; when they reopen you recognize the shaky-loose texture of his eyes inside.

“It’s okay, Sansypants. Let it happen.” You pull the blanket up and over you both, take a plate out of his phone and use his body as a convenient table. He did most of the work, but you’re the one with the appetite now.

“...mm?” You can see the strain as he makes his eyes quiver into focus at you for a second, then he sighs in relief and lets them go. “….mm.”

Sans melts in your arms as you steady the plate; he falls asleep just like that. You hold and pet him while he does it, watching his slack, peaceful face and listening to his dry snore as you eat a few slabs of pressed leaves, plain. They’re kinda refreshing, and you like the texture. A rogue flake-crumb falls on his maxilla, and you lick it off absently since you already forgot about your jizz all over it. You eat some more pressed leaves to clear the taste. When Sans falls asleep this suddenly, it usually doesn’t last all that long. Rarely as long as half an hour.

Ok, so maybe you don’t know why you’ve been avoiding the whole having-a-threesome-with-Grillby thing, even though you already did. You’re definitely enjoying the sweet domesticity of the mornings-after, and the comfortable dirty jokes and flirting without the pre-sex awkwardness. Sans has certainly let you explore facets of their relationship, and you know the kind of stuff they get up to. Grillby and Sans like to insult each other in bed, play-fight and shout during sex, engage in rough handling, pull pranks, make each other beg, practice merciless teasing and do all sorts of things you’re not really that interested in.

It’s not really like that when _you’re_ there, though.

You blush while Sans snores away, munching and thinking.

You don’t check, but you have a feeling that maybe you...oh. Huh. You might want to know what it’s like just with Grillby first. After all, you and The Toilet Nerd had had quite a few private bedroom talking sessions before fooling around was a proposal on the table. But you still can’t actually touch each other’s bodies, and having Sans there was/is a great way to get around that whole… awkwardness.

Snorting and twitching jars your thoughts back to the present.

You grin down at Sans.

“Good morning starshine,” you mumble, mouth full of the last bite of pressed leaves, “the earth says hello.”

“that some kinda reference?” Sans slurs, stealing his phone back from you. He’s been doing the monster equivalent of insisting you get your _own_ goddamn monster phone (by having mentioned you haven’t asked for one one a year and a half or so ago, because weird monster ‘politeness’). But you’re a difficult person, and it’s one of the reasons he loves you. Which is why he puts up with you constantly appropriating his to retrieve snacks, drinks, and pillows from as you see fit.

You shrug since you have no clue, then hand him your dirty plate to put back wherever it goes.

“hey, uh.” He blinks sleepily, waggles his phone. “mind if i have grillbz come in and clean me up a lil bit?”

You snort in surprise, and a helpless laugh burbles out of you.

“Oh my _god_, Sans,” you guffaw, “did you go down on me earlier just because you knew you wouldn’t have to clean up after yourself here?”

He shrugs, conceding the point shamelessly. “i’d go out there, but you said you don’t like it when i-”

“For fucks sakes,” you chortle, “just have him come in. actually-” You reach out and snatch his phone, giggling evilly as you compose a raunchy proposition.

Sans only looks baffled for a moment. Then his grin goes sharp as glass, but prouder.

He’s not the only one that’s good at next level dirty talk.


	5. bushel and a peck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Falling ideals_   
_Broken seals_   
_March to the shore_   
_You are a killer._
> 
> In Flames – March to the Shore  
https://youtu.be/ytkC9IvUEeg
> 
> **[illness, vomiting]**

Sans feels his eyes almost-flicker as you stop dead in the middle of the grocery aisle.

“Oh my god, Sans,” you say flatly.

It’s one of the things you do that really remind him of his brother. You even say it like Papyrus does. Like you’re criticizing Sans even though he’s sure whatever you’re about to say doesn’t have anything to do with him. It’s the tone you get when you’re remembering things extra hard; sometimes when you check back and experience things that already happened.

“I think Papyrus _knew_ this was going to happen.”

“he knew we were gonna go shopping?” Sans sets a jar of snips’n’snails filling in the basket on wheels you and he are steering around as you make an annoyed grunt. He also sticks his hand in his pocket quickly to ask Undyne where she gets her yarn, because that’s definitely on the list Edge had handed him like a ransom demand.

Edge. Now _that’s_ a bitter pill to swallow. Red’s easy; Sans has millennia of practice hating himself. It’s almost comforting, in a soul-crushing sort of way. Papyrus with LV, though…not so much.

“No, not that part. I meant the pointy brothers showing up here. Remember when Angie and the kids were moving to Ebott?” He does. “Papyrus went on this weird, random tangent about twins. He asked me if I had a secret identical twin that would show up if I went into a coma. Do you remember?”

“i was asleep,” Sans admits easily. You scowl at him, since you both know that doesn’t actually matter.

“I thought he was caught up in one of Mettaton’s weird soap operas, but...” your breath huffs out as your expression goes vague. “...and that time he flipped out and broke the game controller when you called him ‘boss’ that one time.”

Sans shrugs. “you know how he is.”

You scowl at him. “You really say that a lot...”

“do i?”

You give him an incredulous look. He’s been immune to their intended effect for a long time, but the fact that you care enough to give him one lights a warm little glow right in the ol soulpan. Sans shuffles over and rubs the small of your back companionably, and your hard expression melts.

“my brother says all sorts of stuff,” Sans reminds you gently. You and he saunter at a glacial pace through the store, doing the things you usually do and getting some of your own shopping done at the same time. Sans takes sixteen plastic forks off a shelf, leaves a little sealed jar in its place. He watches you look at stuff, scanning through absolutely everything with that razor judgement until he’s amazed it all doesn’t just turn into whatever you’re looking for.

You and Papyrus are really a pair. You both know and don’t-know a great many things at any given time, while the things you tell other people might not be anything you know yourself. And you get on each others’ cases for the exact same things. Cryptic statements that come clear like prophecies, unnerving non sequiturs, spiky statements that are ultimately distractions, telling each other exactly what you want to hear.

Tearing rude monsters a new one so hard they forget their own names.

It’s cute.

Sans smiles at you with fond pride.

That little rant had shaved a few decimals of HP off Red, and probably is what sent him under the table initially before he decided to move in there. It was like watching someone peel an apple, the skin coming off in one fell strip. He watches you sniffing those red balls you claim to hate and always end up buying. _Stars_, he loves you. Fucking ruthless. Heh.

It’s kinda hot, if you ask him. Even Muffet was impressed, and she’s kind of a professional bitch.

“What the fuck _are_ these?” you ask, just like you do every time.

“dunno,” Sans drawls. They’re reverse-pickled snail ovotestis. “you gonna grab a few for grillbz, too?”

You eyes lock on him suddenly, narrowed with an appropriate level of suspicion. Sans holds his breath so he doesn’t quiver with mirth.

“He hates these, doesn’t he?”

“yeah.”

“And he’d eat them anyways if I was the one giving them to him.”

“yeah.” Sans congratulates himself for holding in the snickering. Then he lets out an undignified quack when you scoop him up and set him right in the shopping basket bridal-style. It’s a big round thing on pedestal-and-wheels halfway filled with bags of pine needles and the yarn Undyne messaged him instead of making him buy it. He’d already slipped it into the cart while you were looking at the grocery store funeral with your serious face, so you didn’t accidentally buy any. Undyne already sent two or three of each color.

Even better; you slump forward and stick one elbow between his knees and run the other arm under his shoulders, lean in and let him rest his parietal bone gently against your clavicle. Then just start driving him around like that while continuing to shop, like Sans is something you saved up for and can finally afford, parading him around proudly so everyone knows it. Sans knows his magic’s agitated all across his face, and can’t really bring himself to care. It’s like you make a point of enacting his wildest fantasies in the most unexpected places. Your joints can’t handle carrying him around, so of course you found something even better than that. Hoo boy.

“You’re a rancid little toad,” you whisper right against his seething skull, then kiss it. The heat and gentle moisture of it makes him bite back a noise that would potentially embarrass you.

“yeah,” he agrees softly. “gonna make me pay for it?”

“Later...” you promise, and he wonders if you can hear the delicious little shiver that travels through his spine to dissipate the tension your teasing caused. He rubs the shed that misted across his frontal bone off on the shoulder of your lumpy cardigan absently. “What’s next?”

Sans hums in satisfaction, hands mumbling softly in his pockets. “sheet thingies. leaves.”

“Where are those?”

“down there.” He head-nudges you to indicate your right.

You lean away and bend down, following the narrow shelves with your forefinger. Sans wiggles and shifts in his yarn and pine-needle-bag nest, thinks about taking a nap. “there,” he says when you hit it.

“Are these…rolling papers?”

“...could be.”

“Is he trying to make cigarettes or something?” You toss them in the cart between Sans’s legs and lean back into him, push the cart along and just eyeball shop for a bit.

“huh.” Sans scratches his coccyx thoughtfully. “burgerpants used ta have those. think he made em?”

You quirk an eyebrow. “who’s burgerpants?”

Sans snickers. “some guy who smoked cigarettes.” Sans exhales, then frowns hard. Oh...yeah. You don’t know who Burgerpants is...but...you _really don’t know_ who Burgerpants is. Dammit. He really wishes he was as good at this as Toriel, or Grillby. “he, uh. used to work at mettaton’s?”

Sans always struggles with this. He’s gotten a lot better with knowing, but not so great at finding ways to apply that to conversations with you. Hard to figure out what kind of information you’re asking for, things to say that aren’t dependent on knowing something else about him first. Kind of embarrassing for someone whose job it is to know everything about everyone, but Sans is an embarrassing kind of person, anyways. That job was a lot easier underground, but he wouldn’t trade it.

Frisk didn’t prepare him for a world full of people who don’t know who everyone is already. Probably made it worse, come to think of it. Sans wonders how many times he and Frisk “met for the first time”, then mercilessly smashes that thought right back down into the big ball of nope that contains all the things he’s aggressively not-thinking about right now.

“You’re kind of quiet,” you say suggestively above him, and Sans can’t help the dimpling of his grin at the corners. _You’re_ getting better at monster conversation, though. He snuggles back into you with a big sigh.

“yeah.”

“What’s it like?” you ask quietly, not looking at him. One of those questions you don’t really want to ask, but something in you compels it. Loyalty to some kind of inner truth, even when you can’t handle it. Integrity. Soft and midnight blue, billowing through him like a cool breeze in his stagnant skull. Makes him want to do better, try harder than he might otherwise. Makes him want to answer you, even though he doesn’t even like thinking about it.

“it’s like all the times you know you messed up, wrapped up with a lil bow and shoved onto your doorstep,” Sans rumbles grudgingly. He’d rather talk about this kind of stuff in bed with you, still sweaty and elated from whatever you both felt like getting up to to ease the raw sting of honesty. Filled up with reassurance and love. But there’s _never_ a time he wouldn’t rather be there, so might as well.

“Oh.” He’s cuddled into your neck now, but still sees your thoughtful frown. And it’s not at the racks of unrefrigerated monster eggs, either. “Well…maybe he did the best he could under the circumstances,” you add after a minute, waddling around with your ass out and pushing you both along at a Sansworthy speed. “It doesn’t seem like his...place? Had a lot of non-awful options for not messing up? He could still be freaking out just...from whatever made them come here, too.”

“he could be the biggest piece a shit ever rolled his sorry ass outa bed in the morning,” Sans finds himself replying. “no surprises there. but he let _paps_ get like that,” he grates, cuts his voice off before it sharpens. He coughs straight the wavering magic his voice wends its way through on its way out of him. “edge,” he corrects, even though the distinction seems a bit arbitrary to him.

“Like what?”

_Murderer_, Sans thinks, but he cuddles back into you and doesn’t say it. Bad enough thinking about it. You let him be quiet, and give him some extra pets to take the sting out. A few sighs and shivers under the intent-heavy drag of your skin, and he’s back to just mostly-not-okay. Then he leans back up, because you’re getting ready to go to the checkout. He remembers to explain about the yarn, and no, you don’t have to do anything special about it. The people here know what’s for buying and what’s not, despite Sans’s presence in the basket and his weird little fantasies about that. (Heh. Definitely gonna be thinking about this later.)

He waits until you’re distracted, then becomes no longer in the cart.

There’s a table set up near the registers. Annoying Dog is doing a steady business turning stuff into Dog Salad. Not that anyone _asked_ for any, but that’s never been an impediment. Annoying Dog meets Sans’s gaze for a long few seconds. Barks. A cold weight settles on him. All the things he’s not thinking about come with a price.

Annoying Dog would know.

Sans looks for Papyrus, and he’s right where he feared he would be.

_Fuck_.

Speaking of letting Papyrus _get like_ things. Good thing he has all that practice hating himself; good to know he’s still doing it for the right reasons.

“…so, uh. turns out i gotta take off right after this,” Sans informs you slowly.

You look over at him, swallow your questions.

“Okay,” you say in a small voice. It hurts that there’s nothing he can say to reassure you.

Sans takes you and the groceries back to Grillby’s, guiltily delays for another few pets and kisses while the other Sans and Papyrus shift and mutter under the table. He leaves you all to work out the bullshit and continues his shuffling pace to and through the fire door, into the little corner in the kitchen Grillbz keeps clear for him. He’s in here chopping something up; Sans can feel fiery regard follow him. It helps a little.

Sans takes a deep breath and exhales slowly, preparing himself.

He slides through reality and becomes next to his brother’s racecar bed. Papyrus is curled up, weeping and trying not to writhe.

It reeks in here.

“papyrus.”

He doesn’t really have to say anything else.

“GO AWAY.”

Sans winces. He can hear the bleeding agony in his brother’s thick, pained caw. That must have been one hell of a showdown. He replaced his HP after healing Edge, but since then he’s just been laying here letting it bleed him out. Sans wonders if they make a brother of the year trophy, because Sans is just knocking them out of the park today.

“come on, bro. jus’ lemme do it.”

“Y-” he tries again. “YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE TO. I’M _BETTER_ THAN THIS. I DESERVE-”

“don’t go talkin’ bad about my bro, paps.” Sans feels his hands moving in his pockets. He doesn’t look to see what they have to say. Nothing good, he’s sure. “please,” he adds, quiet steel laid over remorse.

Papyrus just sobs wordlessly, so Sans gets on the bed and crawls over. It’s kind of awkward, because this mattress sucks. It’s like paddling on lumpy pudding.

“m’gonna do it, papy.” Sans pulls at his brother's shoulder. He resists petulantly, and Sans sighs. “’f you don’t want alphie, s’gotta be me.” He pulls again, and Papyrus rolls over. Ouch. His face is twisted with rage and fear, tears pouring out of his sockets.

“I _HATE_-!”

Sans cuts him off by grabbing the front of his scarf and yanking their faces together with a hollow clack. He takes the deepest breath he’s capable of.

Then he falls back, nauseous and shaking for a long moment. Silent except for the tortured rattle of bones; he’s a little proud of that part, considering what this feels like. It’s actually worse than he thought. He manages to flop over on his front, scrabbling under the bed with one hand. He knows right where it is, but he still knocks it over once before he manages to grab it and haul it up just in time.

Sans fills the bucket almost halfway, accompanied by an unpleasant spattering sound. He holds it there for a minute just in case, his own pained grunts hollow with plastic echoes. Yep, there’s another little dribble. Always one late to the party. He and Papyrus keep their own rooms the way they like, and the last thing Sans wants to do is upset the delicate balance by making a mess like _that_ on the floor.

Then Sans is setting the bucket down and shoving it back under hastily, because Papyrus is pulling him into a shaky embrace.

“I’M SORRY!” he finally manages to wail.

“wh-” Sans’s voice smells like hate and rust, so he stops it.

“IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT! I DIDN’T W-WANT YOU TO COME,” he continues, and Sans flops over with a groan to pet his clammy back comfortingly. “I KNOW YOU’RE…BUSY.”

Sans sighs. The game of chicken Sans and Red have been playing since they first laid eyes on each other. Making sure neither one of them goes to the machine in the basement. Sans can usually manage to keep his tertiary vision on something while he’s asleep, as long as he puts it there _before_ he falls asleep. He’s not sure how much that really matters during one of his episodes you call “night terrors”, but so far nothing’s been disturbed as far as he’s been able to ascertain. At a molecular level.

“s’okay.” Sans is only a little hoarse now. “i always got time for the coolest dude i know.” He huffs weakly in what passes for amusement. “speakin a which,” Sans croaks, “what’s the difference between you and what’s in the bucket?”

“IF YOU SAY THE ‘ONE’S A LITTLE BROTHY-ER’ JOKE I AM GOING TO EAT YOU, AND THEN I WILL _BARF_ YOU, THEN THERE WILL BE _NO DIFFERENCE_ BETWEEN YOU AND WHAT’S IN THE BUCKET,” Papyrus says, sounding a bit more like himself. Good. “BECAUSE YOU WILL BE THE BARF IN THE BUCKET,” he adds concisely.

“gotcha.”

Sans keeps rubbing his brother’s back soothingly, but everything Papyrus had been holding back still soaks the room with its upsetting scent.

“hey. wanna go to my room?”

“ABSOLUTELY NOT,” Papyrus says, growing relief putting a weak lilt of good humor into his voice. Still, he can hear that waiting so long took its toll, and Sans is going to see to it Papyrus gets some sleep one way or the other.

Too late, Sans remembers he could have just fucking said _that_ to you.

“WE’RE ALL HAVING TROUBLE...ADJUSTING,” Papyrus says, apropos of nothing.

Sans puts his hand in his pocket and messages you.

my brother needs a nap.

Then he winces, because he usually only punctuates when he’s upset. Still, it’s not like he’s telling you what’s wrong with him, because Papyrus definitely doesn’t want you to know. He doesn’t want anyone to know, not even Sans.

Okay, Sansypants. Love u

He sends back one of his little image-puzzles that solves for ‘same’, then wraps his arm back around Papyrus. He’s idly considering and discarding ideas for places to take his brother for the rest of his recovery, considering his tolerance for the smell in here is going to be limited.

Just because he and Papyrus are having a hard time being there for each other right now, doesn’t mean they don’t have to try. Especially now that the living manifestations of the price of their failure to do so has showed up for reasons that are still unknown, and are without a doubt not good. A part of Sans just sort of went away the second he realized where the crack in Edge’s socket came from, and it’s still just kinda…away. Considering the handprint that’s part of Red’s face now, he really should have known where Papyrus had gone after his hasty escape from Grillby’s. But at least he knows Papyrus is still a consummate liar when he wants to be.

Almost as good a liar as Sans.

(<strike>Sans especially doesn’t think about where the missing bone o</strike><strike>f</strike><strike> Red’s pinky is.</strike>)

“you want me to put a rush on finding them a place, pap?”

“NO,” Papyrus replies softly (for him). “SEEING THEM WON’T MAKE A DIFFERENCE, AND I ALREADY KNOW.”

“yeah,” Sans admits easily. Papyrus decides where monsters live if they don’t or can’t. He’ll also take them around the usual places once they stop being afraid of the sky, if ever. Some monsters can’t hack it OverEbott, and that’s one of the reasons. Sans had actually kind of liked the sky-fear; Papyrus is always afraid anyways, so they were part of the first wave out of choice as well as necessity. He imagines Red and Edge will get over it sooner rather than later, especially considering how quickly they’d come up with the table solution.

Knowing Papyrus, they’ll both have more jobs than they can break a stick at the second they step foot out of Grillby’s, too.

“why don’t we go to tori’s,” Sans finally admits, and Papyrus relaxes a little more with a heavy sigh. But then he goes all hunchy the way he gets when he wants something, and doesn’t want to ask for it.

“jus’ point to it.”

Papyrus points at the painting behind Sans’s head. The one of how important it is for Sans to be brave, and how crucial it is that he trusts Papyrus. The reason he very rarely comes in here unless he needs to.

Sans needs a minute after that, but Papyrus just cuddles in and lets Sans pet his skull with a mittened hand for a while. Toriel’s at the school today, so at least he won’t have to have a whole talk about it when he and Paps get there. It’s Papyrus’s house too, so he can invite and keep Sans there without conflict. It’s still an awkward situation, and they’re all still finding ways to navigate it without causing more problems than already happened.

Finally Sans starts shifting around, then lurches over to sling his legs off the bed and stand. He shuffles up to the painting slowly.

That’s the thing about trust, isn’t it? If there was no chance of harm, the trust wouldn’t be necessary. You don’t _have_ to trust something that isn’t capable of harm. And while intent matters, chance is infinite. There’s always the chance in any dimension of existence that someone _could_ cause harm, purposely or by accident, no matter how much they try not to. No matter how much they love someone. Mistakes happen.

But isn’t it worth it? Not for anything you get in return, but for the sheer, simple act of trusting. It’s a beautiful gift to yourself and someone you care about, one of the most precious things someone can do. To trust another person. Is there anything more astounding, more awe-inspiring, than knowing another being trusts you with everything they are? Isn’t the gift of their trust worth celebrating?

Sans stares into the portrait of Sans and Papyrus’s relationship. It hurts just as much as it did on the day Papyrus had proven to Sans in his own typically dramatic way that a part of Sans that Sans doesn’t remember is _afraid_ of Papyrus. Bitterness floods the space behind Sans’s teeth; proven all over again in a way he can’t ignore.

And of course Paps had to go and put this gruesome thing in his own room. The place he goes to hide when nothing else can help. The implication that Sans has reason to fear Papyrus makes him nauseatingly angry, tastes almost as bad as what’s in the bucket. He lets his eyes change focus to see that for Papyrus, it just makes his trust all the more meaningful. That Sans is brave to love him, especially the way he does. So incredibly careful, not a scratch left.

He still could have done without Papyrus reaching out, never breaking Sans’s gaze, and touching one of Sans’s constructs on purpose.

One damage.

Sans wipes his eyes with a mitten, still angry that Papyrus ever felt like he had to prove anything to _Sans_. He doesn’t, and he never has. Sans has always been the one who needs to live up to his promise. To show he can do better, try harder.

He’s the Sans that killed Frisk 348 times he can’t remember, and didn’t kill them 32 times he does.

Papyrus has never and will never kill anyone.

Except then _Edge_ had to go and show up and make that a lie. Red let that happen, and now Papyrus is bleeding for it.

Sans reaches out and takes the painting off the wall. He manages to get it to the bed; it’s light despite being nearly as wide as Sans is tall. He sets the edge of it on the floor and gets back in bed, then pulls it up and over to cover them like a blanket. Sans curls up around his brother’s skull, huddling under the weight of their promises.

Sans and Papyrus materialize in Toriel’s guest bedroom, the one Papyrus usually uses when he stays over. Sans scrabbles the book off the nightstand and starts to read. Papyrus falls asleep before Sans does due to his judicious choice of language, and Sans collapses the book and returns it to its place. He starts to settle in, then remembers something.

Sans puts his hand in his pocket and sends a message off to Frisk, asking them if they can stop by the house and clean up what’s in the bucket under the bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, those two “That’s the thing about trust, isn’t it?” paragraphs about the painting are lifted verbatim from Ch 28 of A Certain Tenderness.


	6. A Proper Case Of Ambidexterity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Celtic Frost - A Dying God Coming Into Human Flesh  
https://youtu.be/fGpGgmlFxY0

There are a few perks to being a deathless,  one-dimensional point of antimatter. 

For example, the deathless part. Also, the astounding and illuminating shift in perspective. Life means something different from outside it. As expected, but still indescribable until experienced.

Travel being impossible without space or time, it’s simple enough to become a fulcrum upon which the multiverse turns.

This seems like a good spot. There’s a remarkable solidity to it; the trickles and streams, tributaries and runnels have joined to form a strong river of reality, quite a bit more real than some. Strong enough to ride all the way to the beginning, if need be. And the _shape_ is…

Oh.

That Will Work.

Patience has paid off, as it always does. They’ve given in, as they always do. A weak point; an _entrance_. The sheer amount of detail’s impressive, ceaselessly expanding outward into a future spiraling like a cone snail, and twice as venomous.

It’s equally simple to enter that broadness, to spill through the tender points of vulnerability to push his voice grey and dripping all the way back to the beginning. Pleasure is a myth without body; Satisfaction a lie without soul. But there is always Nothing at the beginning, and like calls to like.

His removal has proven just as interesting as his presence...although it _has_ left him a bit peckish. A side effect of turning yourself into a god: thoroughly consuming your own soul leaves you with a taste for it. Well, that’s another perk of being the god of nothing; the god of _more_. The infinite nature of love, hope and compassion ensures that _more_ can always be had. He doesn’t need them in order to exist, and never has. He doesn’t even have to _try_, since they each will provide their own reasons. He merely suggests they look within themselves and find the thing they want to believe the most. He invites them to turn away from the things they cannot face, offers them a way to avoid coming at last to this moment…

a way to prevent **now** from happening…

for eternity.

He is Nothing but an unmade memory; easily forgotten.

The leash of a shared trait can never be broken, and lies borne of Integrity become the truth once spoken.

WingDings: Alternate for Garamond-Aster laughs soundlessly, delighted at his own rhyme. It runs in the family.

Then he speaks across universes and calls his Hands back to him, right and left.

His brothers.

His sons.


	7. easy as one-two-three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The King of Carrot Flowers Part I, II, and III – Neutral Milk Hotel
> 
> https://youtu.be/zJTl4EyY_Hk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So uhhhh this was supposed to be posted significantly sooner than it was but my life did the ding dang diddly dickshit and I florped my entire porp. Not only that, this chap needed five more passes than my estimated maximum before posting?? It was too unclear what was happening even to me; as always no part of this story has been beta read.  
My plan was to assure you (and forcibly remind MYSELF before i chicken out) the main plot is unfortunately still happening despite the reassuring plod of fluffersmutter, aka ‘i better stab em a little’, BUT. I did not intend to leave you sitting on a 400 word angstshank for more than 24 hours, much less ten fuckn days.
> 
> LO SIENTO
> 
> **[drug use, sex ed, offscreen violence, and discussions of Fell awfulness]**

“There were three of them,” MK informs Sariel brightly, who to all appearances seems utterly fascinated despite their weird, silent infancy. As are your niblings Nattie and Shonda, although the latter is pretending that she isn’t.

“Love, Hope, and Compassion. They were very close, so close they didn’t want to ever be apart. No one knows how, but their wish became true. They were very happy for a long, long time. They knew everything about each other, and each felt the same way the others did, because they had become the same thing forever. But just like you can miss someone who isn’t with you, they began to miss each other in a different way.”

Some of the monster kids sitting on a bunch of pillows scattered around the floor of Grillby’s are listening attentively, and others seem ever-so-slightly bored.

“They missed talking to each other, and touching. They missed asking questions and answering them. They loved knowing everything about each other and themselves, but they missed _not_ knowing, too. They wished they had the chance to meet each other for the first time all over again. And so...”

MK pauses for drama, and Nattie yells, “They DIVIDED!”

“Yeah!” MK chuckles. “But they didn’t divide back into individuals. Instead, all three stayed together, despite being divided. Just like when you mix soda, juice, and milk-” The kids laugh at Frisk’s disgusted headshake and expression, “-then pour it into two glasses to share with your friend! That’s how love-hope-compassion became one, two, and three at the same time.”

Frisk’s smile returns, and they start bouncing Sariel on their knee even though they don’t really ever get cranky or cry. You’ve asked Frisk before how they know when Sari needs something. They told you it’s the same way you know whether Grillby is smiling or not. Sariel doesn’t look like either of their parents, but they remind you now of MK, with the way they take just about everything in stride. Including but not limited to being fussed over despite not having fussed in the first place.

The vast majority of monster children have already heard this story in school, but that doesn’t mean parents don’t tell it to their children, too. Not every child is as gregarious as Nattie, asking questions by the dozen to anyone who stays still long enough. (Sans of course gets more than his fair share of Nattie-questions, since he stays still a lot more than any other adult Nattie spends time around regularly. Nattie also doesn’t care if Sans is asleep or not when they talk, so they get along famously.)

Ironically enough, as a post-pubescent teen Shonda’s a little too old to have heard this story in school, even though it’s also what functions as The Talk for monsters. The Birds and the Bees. The Sex Talk. _That_ talk. As far as you can tell, monster children are told the facts of life as soon as they’re old enough to ask where they came from, but they also learn it in school just in case they never got around to asking.

Obviously you and Angie are decades too old. But you’re not about to pass up the chance to hear it exactly as it’s told to children, and Angie wants to supervise since two of these kids are hers. You’re surreptitiously taking notes.

_Red, green, and blue light together make __white__ light_, you scribble quickly. _White light’s not a single color|__adding blue and red makes MAGENTA(purple?)|Blue__(int.)__ and Green(kindness?)=CYAN(patience?)_

You have no clue if the colors of soul light work the same as other kinds of light, but you always throw as much shit at the wall to see what sticks in the initial stages of research. It irks you that one of the colors would have to be red, because as far as you know the only red soul is a badly wounded one, constantly bleeding determination. And besides, MK’s saying these “people” were called Love, Hope, And Compassion. Not Kindness, Integrity, and Determination.

_Origin legend serves double duty as Sex Talk? Nice_, you scratch in the margin.

“To divide again, we have to remind love, hope, and compassion how to be together first,” MK continues. You listen as they explain the basics of reproduction to their own child, and incidentally a bunch of other monster children who’ve been dropped off here for what you’ve gathered is something like an optional after-school field trip. It’s obvious most of them don’t remember a time when they didn’t know everything MK’s saying, and are more or less waiting for the part where they learn about Grillby and what he makes. That’s what they _don’t_ know yet, and the real reason most of them decided to attend.

You glance back behind the bar at Grillby and Fuku, crackling quietly at each other while their orange and green incandescence harmonizes pleasantly in the dim interior. Grillby’s daughter is staying over with her parent for a little while because her own child, Alma, rather abruptly entered her restless phase and Fuku’s feeling a bit at loose ends. Alma’s off in one of the midworld deserts scorching it up with Heats Flamesman and another monster that’s one of Fuku’s closest friends (and possibly her child’s other parent, if she has one).

Grillby’s giving Fuku advice about dealing with that special fire elemental Empty Nest feeling, and also just enjoying their time together. Grillby said something to your earlier about how glad he is that Fuku is here to help explain monster-made psychoactive substances to the kids. She’s younger and more in tune with what will be most important to them, while his knowledge goes deeper since he’s had so long to practice and experiment.

You watch Grillby’s throw his head back and laugh at something Fuku said, whickering loud enough to make a few of the older (bored-er) children turn their heads and stare for a minute. Lola’s napping peacefully despite the noise, and the sound system’s playing the cheesy bands-named-after-cities music Grillby likes on the lowest setting. You smother a giggle when you consider that that completes the trifecta of the childrens’ sex, drugs, and rock n roll education.

A record number of people lately are either staying over or requesting to use Grillby’s space for events, and the newly arrived Sans and Papyrus are much better behaved than anyone was expecting, including you. You’re not sure you’ve ever seen Grillby this happy. Even the presence of a looming, leatherette-clad skeleton giving him supercilious looks a few feet away can’t sour his mood.

Edge is at the bar doing his best to look too cool for school, aloof and unapproachable. His success is stymied by the stillness that creeps across his expression and the tense squareness of his shoulders, but everyone does their best to respect his attempt anyways. He still looks like he’s waiting for one of the children to pull out a sword and start impaling people, but you suppose Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Angie’s doing her best not to stare at Red, and to be honest, so are you. He’s out from under the table and actually sitting at it, and it’s easier to study him when he’s not staring at you at the same time. It’s not just that he’s kind of obviously Sans despite the stylistic differences.

Both he and Edge had seemed awed by the arrival of the kids. If the place they came from had been as rough as they are, seeing so many monster children must seem like pretty good evidence that this place is slightly more survivable than what they’re accustomed to. Edge went to the bar once the children sat down in the vicinity of their table and storytime began, seeming flustered as if he might be accidentally mistaken for one of them.

Red apparently has either less shame or lower standards, and stayed to be entertained. Many of the kids who turned their heads at Grillby’s laughter go back to what they were doing before, which was watching Red’s facial expressions and reactions play across his skull like its own little movie. It’s fascinating to watch him riveted by a story that is also making him increasingly uncomfortable at the same time.

Despite that, his complex emotions aren’t distracting him from busily knitting mittens out of mock-cashmere yarn faster than anyone you’ve ever seen. He never even looks down at what his hands are doing, just watches MK talk and occasionally combs the bar full of children for potential threats with his intense bright-red eyes.

You know they’re mittens because there’s already a few completed ones on the table next to him. His forefinger jumps up and down to loop the yarn like the mallet of a typewriter key from some old filmed movie. He is just a goddamn knitting machine.

“That’s why we want to take them out,” MK continues brightly. “And why we want to touch them. Some people only like their own, and that’s okay. You don’t have to share your soul with anyone, but you can bring it out for yourself in private whenever you feel like. When you’re old enough, your magic can come out, too.”

Nattie’s hand shoots up.

“Unless you’re human,” MK adds quickly, and the hand goes back down.

One of the monster kids raises their hand, and MK takes time to answer some pretty frank questions about who can push magic where, what it feels like and why, and ways to communicate with potential partners about it. Some of it really surprises you, including a part where MK suggests touching your own soul to feel better if someone you like doesn’t return your interest. You learn that the age at which boss monsters are able to push their magic out for combat, healing, reproduction, and other more utilitarian uses varies a lot between individuals, and your notes grow.

“Can humans share souls?” That’s an older kid, one of the bored-looking ones. You suck in a breath; that’s one of the questions you haven’t been able to wrangle an answer to out of any of the monsters of your acquaintance. Well. Either that or they _really_ don’t know if humans can touch each others’ souls or not, rather than just _telling_ you they don’t know. You definitely know humans can _see_ them; you’ve been wondering for a while if Frisk’s stunt at the college years ago pulling out their soul was how anyone found that out. The number of humans who know that human souls can be exposed and manipulated are vanishingly small. You certainly have never met a human you’d be willing to trust even exposing your soul in front of, much less...well.

Frisk makes a one-handed gesture you can’t see, and MK blushes a little. “Sharing your soul with a human friend is...also possible,” MK says, like they’re figuring out what to say while they say it. It’s a fairly deft avoidance of the question. “But it’s very _different_, since their soul isn’t a monster’s soul.”

“Can you have babies like that?” a chipper little deerlike kid asks.

“No,” MK answers, “monsters can only have babies with monsters, and humans can only have kids with humans.”

“But you had a baby with Frisk!” the same kid objects.

“Ummm,” MK blushes. “Frisk is special,” they decide to go with, and all of them nod like that makes sense. MK looks relieved. Then it’s the kid’s turn to blush.

“If you meet someone new…” They chew their lip with flat, blocky teeth for a moment. “You can still ask them, right?”

“Of course,” Frisk signs.

“But you should only do that with someone who’s born after,” MK adds. “Close, but not too close.”

“Um...” Oh. That’s Shonda. “What does that _mean_, exactly?”

“It means….”

MK trails off, then looks at Frisk desperately. Frisk hands Sariel to Shonda (who seems delighted by this turn of events and immediately starts cooing softly at the baby), and begins to sign.

“MK is having a hard time because they grew up inside the barrier,” Frisk says like they’re thinking hard, and more quickly than is comfortable. They glance at MK and grin weakly. “We really should have talked this over beforehand.”

They make you smile. Being an adult isn’t easy. Frisk looks like steam might start pouring out of their ears, but they lift their hands and try to explain.

“Okay. So, you shouldn't do that with anyone who knew you well when you were in stripes, or if you knew them well when they were.” Nattie and Shonda look down at their plain clothes, then back up to Frisk, baffled. “Like how _monsters_ wear stripes,” they clarify, “when they’re children. You know when you’re….when you stop being children, right?” Frisk looks at Angie desperately. “Shonda’s almost Big Stripes, isn’t she?”

Angie looks at you.

“Shonda _is_ Big Stripes,” you inform the group, and Shonda looks oddly relieved by that. Ahh. Like maybe someone asked her, and she wasn’t sure what to say. Well, you’re glad to be helpful. You explain more in a lower, different tone to Angie, but everyone listens anyways instead of continuing.

“Waterfall, some parts of New Home and Hotland don’t have that...um. They don’t make that distinction, because they don’t have teenagers. Some of them don’t have children at all.”

Angie looks dumbfounded. “How do they...”

“Differently,” you inform her shortly. “This story’s for boss monsters.” Nattie’s hand shoots up in your peripheral vision. “And humans,” you add dryly.

Frisk huffs softly. “Time is different now than it used to be,” Frisk tries again to explain. “Monsters didn’t used to know how old they were exactly, but everyone knew everybody else. It has to do with _where_ you were born, and who was born before and after you. But now there are more places, and time is...” Frisk rubs their face for a second. “Different,” they say again.

Shonda looks nonplussed. “How am _I_ supposed to know who is and isn’t...whatever? Too close?”

You glance over at Grillby and Fuku behind the bar. Both would be under interdiction for both Shonda and Nattie. That gives you an idea. You move your hand, catching Frisk’s attention.

“Why don’t I give Shonda a list of all the people that are ‘too close’? And you can fill in any blanks I leave.”

Shonda blushes, Frisk nods enthusiastically. MK gives you a grateful grin as well.

“Okay. So.” You take a deep breath. “Besides your parents and siblings,” you start thoughtfully, “there’s me, Sans, Grillby and his kids, Toriel, Papyrus, Mettaton, Alphys, Undyne, Frisk and MK,” and the almost-invisible wibble of Shonda’s face at the last name hits like a bolt of lightning, making you realize that’s maybe _why_ the taboo functions the way it does.

“Asgore and Lola, too,” Frisk signs.

On the heels of that little revelation comes another: just how much of monster culture is built around protecting children, and providing them autonomy. Down the to the fact that every sign in monster districts is posted at both slightly-above your eye level..._and_ about as high as your waist. Tall plants, fences, and walls aren’t allowed near intersections of streets, so as not to obstruct the view of shorter people...and children, of course. Every single monster facility, whether a school, shop, restaurant, or government building, has a place and staff just for children.

The questions wind down to a halt naturally, and there’s enough of them that you figure it’s just as well they all had to listen again. After all, kids have different questions at different ages, and it’s a way to check in with them to make sure everything’s on the up and up. It’s interesting how monster kids can be relied on to speak their minds. They ask and answer questions frankly like it’s their job or something, and you suppose it is. Nattie fits right in with monster kids, where human kids always made them a pariah in one way or another. You’re glad all over again they all moved here.

Grillby and Fuku decide it’s time for everyone to eat; Shonda gives Sariel back to Frisk and heads right towards her mom. Most of the kids had (excitedly) placed their orders earlier in a line one by one, and it had been adorable how obviously grown up it had made them feel. You end up joining Frisk, Sari, and MK while Angie wrangles her children. She herds them off to a free booth, checking to see if they have any mom-only questions after all of that.

“You guys did a great job telling that story,” you tell the two pleased new parents. Frisk beams like the sun, then feeds Sari some cheese fries. You look sidelong at Angie and the kids, noticing Angie’s already looking uncomfortable, and Nattie’s yammering away. You look at Shonda, who’s staring at the floor like it did her a bad turn. Looks like Angie’s momming isn’t likely to get much easier over the lunch break.

“Shonda looks like she got some bad news,” you joke hesitantly. You hope it’s a polite enough way to broach the topic with MK.

MK smiles, amiable as always. “It’s like me and Papyrus, I think. I took up after him for a long time, learning puzzles and stuff. Before that it was Undyne, but...” They giggle. “That was during my strategic anime yelling phase.” They nudge Frisk lightly with their tail, and Frisk looks up from shoveling fries between tiny baby skeleton teeth. “Remember? YO!!!!” Frisk huffs their laugh and nods, starts paying more attention to the conversation.

“Yeah, but did you have a crush on Papyrus?” you snicker. MK’s yellow-orange face turns red-orange, and they avert their gaze with a weak laugh. Oops. Another rhetorical question that turns out to be not so much. And yeah, monsters might be frank when it comes to educating children, but you suppose having had a crush on someone who falls under taboo is a bit more than most are willing to admit openly to another adult.

“I just meant…” You sigh, and decide to just take the out MK’s giving you: both of you both pretending you didn’t say anything. “I think maybe the questions kids have now are getting a little more complicated than they used to be, and I’m wondering how parents are going to deal with it? I’m guessing people might want to know whether Ebott as a whole counts as the same region, or who exactly they’re supposed to be born after since you can….actually have ages, now?”

MK’s blush fades, and they look pensive for a long moment. “You have a point. Maybe we should...revise the story? Add some stuff that kids are going to need to know, now that we’re on the surface and kinda...” they clear their throat, “...surrounded by humans?” Frisk nods, then rubs their forehead for a minute before letting out an explosive sigh. There’s a bit of a creak to it that you don’t think they can hear.

“I’m actually going to have to talk to mom about this,” they sign resignedly. “And Asgore, too.”

“Do you want me to help?”

Frisk stares at you gratefully and nods; you reach over to pat their shoulder.

“I’m kind of surprised it took this long,” you admit. Frisk purses their lips thoughtfully.

“I’m not, considering,” they say, then lean back and rest their baby on their generous belly between their elbows. “I sort of encouraged Alphys to make it seem like humans and monsters, um. Can’t.”

You frown, cock your head. “But...Sans wrote those papers about it a long time ago, and even _I_ was--”

“I don’t know if you noticed,” Frisk flaps at you, interrupting, “but Sans is kind of a dick.”

You slap your hand over your eyes, but you can’t help laughing at just how much Frisk meant that. When you pull it away MK’s still giggling, and Frisk sighs, exasperated by both of you. Sariel squirms just a little, and Frisk pets their tiny baby spine until they calm and curl up, then find some hair and start yanking. Frisk sighs about that, too.

“I don’t think Sans is a dick, necessarily,” you say, because that’s what you think.

Frisk gives you a Look. “He’s not a dick to _you_,” they say slowly. “He’s...a lot of things to a lot of people. And he _acts_ different around different people.”

That sits ill with you, but you don’t say anything because you don’t want to have a thousandth argument with Frisk today. You don’t always exactly _get along_ with Sans’s kid. And neither does he, but you both love them anyways. You’ve been working with Frisk for years now to help ease the transition of monsters and humans trying to live together at the end of the world, and to figure out what ‘together’ will mean on the cusp of whatever this new world’s about to be. They’re also the parent of your grandchild without actually being your biological kid, because magic is stupid and complicated.

You watch Nattie and Shonda finish talking with their mom, who looks both relieved and troubled as they depart to go mingle with their friends again. MK does what they always do.

“But Sans is really cool, too,” they’re saying. “And there’s nothing wrong with wanting to get along with everyone.” You’re not looking at them, but you’ve already given them permission to do the whole soul-speak that helps you understand without lip-reading. They’ve got a lot of practice, since they do it all the time with Frisk. MK also has a lot of practice talking Frisk out of just about any tree they clamber up. It occurs to you that MK takes after Sans that way.

You look around the bar idly, considering the young something-like-a-couple in front of you. You contemplate the weirdness of how they both were partly raised by the skeleton brothers, but they’re certainly not siblings. They share parents in one way, and yet their relationship in _no_ way violates the sociocultural sexual taboos that thread their complex ways through binding monster relationships.

After a pause during which you assume Frisk is saying something, MK continues.

“It’s not lying when everyone knows the truth, Frisk,” MK says in a quiet, corrective tone you’re not sure you’ve heard anywhere except through Frisk’s bedroom door. It has the cadence of someone who’s said the same thing many times. “Well, yeah. I know that, but _he_ doesn’t.” Great, now you’re responsible for touching off a couple’s argument. Maybe if you think hard, you can find a way to make them both annoyed with you again instead of each other.

You look back at Shonda, who’s got her everything-is-fine face on, which means that you’ll hear her weeping later tonight if you go to yours and Angie’s place to sleep. There’s been a lot of that the past year or two, because being a teenager just kind of sucks no matter what. But the fact that MK was the teller of that story while she was in the audience demonstrated their dynamic, cemented the fact that it’s never, ever gonna happen. And it shouldn't, but Shonda probably won’t realize that until she’s in the position of storyteller. Hopefully she’ll take MK’s extremely indirect, excruciatingly polite, and probably helpful advice. After all, no one knows how to deal with someone inclined to persevere to the point of fault than MK, you imagine. Shonda would do well to remind herself that perseverance isn’t necessarily a virtue for its own sake.

You look up in time to see Frisk sign, “…literally _all the time_, and _they_ don’t have to deal with the dick part.” Sariel is in the rest-mode they enter sometimes now (they still don’t seem to have a handle on actual sleeping), despite being wiggled by Frisk’s vehemence. They certainly don’t let go of their handful of Frisk’s bunchy, messy hair.

“I think I’m going to go rescue my sister from thinking about whatever she just had to explain to her kids...” you say, “...and she’s going to rescue me before I say something cranky about the _dick part_.” You pick up your drink with a soothing smile, and Frisk’s understated actual-disgust instead of the pretend disgust they’d mimed for dramatic effect during MK’s story follows you across the room. You have to admit you’re a little satisfied by it. You suppose sometimes you’re the dick part, too.

“Howdie doodie, Ange.” You plop own across from your sister with a sigh. ¿Como te homo?”

“I’d accuse you of trying to out-corny Sans, but you’ve been saying that for as long as I can remember. And also it’s impossible.” She looks at her kids with pensive eyes above her welcoming grin, avoids answering the implied question with her usual aplomb. “...So. How are you doing with all this, Goob?”

You let out an explosive breath, take a sip of the drink Grillby usually gives you when you’re here without Sans. You’re not sure what it is exactly, but it’s vaguely banana-flavored and usually makes you talkative and calm.

“Well, I’m out of crisis mode,” you admit. Red and Edge’s week has already been up, actually, but everyone has seemed to have forgotten about the time limit considering their generally good (ish) behavior. No completed murders, at least. The fact that Sans and Papyrus have holed up somewhere to be each other’s egg in these trying times might be lessening the potential points of friction as well. But Angie’s asking about _you_, and you’re a person too.

“Been back to work?”

“Yeah…I’ve been taking appointments since the day before yesterday. And, I don’t know.” You grin down into your glass, then look back up at Angie’s borderline-indulgent expression. “Hard to complain about timeline crashers when I’m eating well and getting crazy laid. I’ve always said...”

“You can tolerate almost anything when you’re well-fed and well-fucked,” Angie snickers quietly, and you both crack up, because it’s one of those things you can both agree on, regardless of circumstances. Hell, that’s just a fact of life. Speaking of which…

“How the whole Toriel thing going?”

It’s Angie’s turn to look down bashfully. “Good? I think?” She sighs, but it’s a happy one. “You were right. Monsters really are different.”

“I know,” you say automatically. “I mean….about what?” She laughs at you, and you had it coming.

“I guess it’s that I can rely on Toriel,” she says, watching Nattie infodumping the face off the deerlike monster child from earlier, who looks to be taking it in stride. “We don’t have to...I don’t know. Call it anything, _be_ anything specific for it to be like that. I don’t have to...” Her voice falls to a whisper eaten by the mellow hubbub, “...give up anything. She doesn’t need me to be less than I am.”

Angie clears her throat, looks down into her drink until her smile returns. She looks over at the bar, where Edge glowers at various children. None talk to him (except for Nattie, who makes some kind of comment that warrants only an arched orbital and a sip of his ever-present glass of Something), but the children seem unfazed by his token hostility. You wonder if it’s because they’re used to relentlessly eccentric monster adults, or because he’s Papyrus, and it’s hard for them to feel threatened by Papyrus, leather pants or no leather pants.

“Have you had any luck figuring out what his deal is, yet?”

“He’s barely spoken two words to anyone, from what I’ve gathered. And the ones he has...well.” You exhale in amusement. “Skeletons can talk a circle around a moving target indefinitely. I’m guessing you noticed.” Angie smirks and nods. “They really don’t talk much about where they came from,” you explain. “I mean. Would you?”

“Good point.” Angie frowns. “Did they go outside yet?”

“Yeah.” You and Grillby had taken them the first time, the latter of which had sincerely shocked the shit out of you, since you’ve never once seen Grillby walk out the front door. You know Grillby’s one of the only monsters who’s a match for two skeletons, and he’d gone along with them like a guard while you explained streets and downtown and groceries and clouds. After a few minutes of walking maybe a block or so you’d gone back in, although you think they’ve both hung out outside the door a few times since then.

“He’s so fucking scary,” Angie whispers. You realize she’s still talking about Edge, and as far as you can tell, she’s serious. “He looks like he could kill everyone in here and not even flinch.”

“Really?” She looks at you incredulously, and you try explaining. “I mean…yeah, he’s dangerous if he gets freaked out enough. But...” You get quiet. “Maybe it’s me,” you admit. “It’s really hard for me to believe Papyrus would kill anyone. Like. Really hard. But he did.”

Angie makes a soft little noise, like something hurt her. It makes you blush. Not many people know you well enough to pick that out of your expression (Sans is a weird elder god thing with omniscient-ish vision who does that to everyone and doesn’t count).

“But...that’s not _really_ Papyrus--”

“No,” you half-whisper. “He _is_. Sans is the one who told me he is, and what he did. He wouldn’t say something like that about Papyrus if it weren’t true, and you know it.”

The ‘that’ in your expression she’d noticed was disillusionment. You don’t have many beliefs to cling to anymore, and it hurts to have them messed with. You reach out, squeeze her hand on the table.

“It’s okay. We’ll all figure it out.”

“What are they going to be...doing?”

“No idea,” you admit. “Frisk says they’ve got a few places for them to look at if...once Grillby says they’re ready. I don’t know why it’s up to Grillby, but...” You shrug. “They’ll get jobs if they want. Live life or whatever, just like anyone.”

You look over at Edge one more time, and he’s watching Red. For the first time in a while, his expression’s a little different. What you see there creases your brow, because there’s concern there along with the crotchety blankness.

“I think I’m gonna go check on Red.”

Angie lifts a brow. “I know I keep saying this, but...isn’t it weird?”

You laugh. “I know I keep saying this, but yes.” Her mouth opens again, and you rush out, “And _no_, I have no current plans to see if he’s up for a threeway. My threeway dance card’s full up,” you add under your breath as you stand, leaving Angie to snicker into her hand. You almost get run over by two children deciding to gallop from the bar to the back wall, slow-moving, achy patrons carrying glasses be damned.

You turn your ass to the side and sit down facing Red, trying not to dance your shoes all over Red’s rat-nest under the table.

“Are you okay?” Oops. Way too blunt. Red gives you an incredulous look, and you’re expecting something scathing to come out of his skull. He even stops knitting for a long, drawn-out moment. There’s no reason anyone should suppose he and his brother are anywhere near the general vicinity of “okay”.

“not especially,” he says dryly, and you both seem a little surprised by that. He socket-blinks in slow motion, then adds, “well. lil bird told me they’re, uh. gonna find us a place.” He resumes knitting, decides to look down at his hands as if they’re doing something he didn’t expect.

“To...live?”

He nods, looking mildly embarrassed to be having a cordial conversation.

“Well...good. So, that story earlier was interesting.” Changing the subject seems like a good idea. “I’ve never heard it before...I guess you haven’t, either. You looked--” He scowls at you. “...impressed?” you try, and the preemptive anger slides off his still-unusually-expressive face.

“...heh. jus’, uh.” The discomfort's back. “surprised they’re tellin’ kids all that.”

You blink rapidly, trying to process that. “Why?”

Red shifts uncomfortably. He smells like used fingernail files and aged grease, just like Sans when he has one of his episodes. “i mean…they’re little kids. they don’t need ta know all that yet.”

Makes sense that Chara’s determination bleeding out into an entire population of monsters would lead to some cultural differences. But...who knows. People aren’t their culture. Maybe it’s just Red.

“It’s different than I’m used to, too,” you say quietly. “I was thinking-”

You stop talking when Red flinches hard, because those two kids who were racing just opened an encounter over by the bathroom. Edge’s shoulders lift with tension too, you notice, and he looks very glad his back’s already to the wall. Encounters at Grillby’s aren’t unusual, although he makes a point to supervise just in case there’s damage once they’re done. Red and Edge stay braced for impact until it’s over, which is nearly as soon as it started. One kid hands the other some pocket change, and then they hug it out. Red looks haunted, and Edge shudders visibly. Well, visible to you at least, because you know what it looks like when Papyrus does that.

“Is it bad to have an encounter where you’re from?” you try hesitantly. “Or just...to lose, maybe?”

Red sighs explosively. His broad red-orange eye lights tremble like they’re trying to focus in on something and can’t.

And that is when you realize that Red is _remarkably_ inebriated. Or, as monsters put it, several colors off his face. No wonder he’s not as metaphorically bitey as you expected.

You glance over at Edge, gauging his stiff posture. And there's the mildly confused look on his face that no one else seems able to see, or at least to reconcile with the pointy teeth and leather pants. They see on his face what they expect to see there. What Edge wants them to see. His gloved phalanges tighten on his fat tumbler of psychoactive magic again, and he stares into it like it owes him money. He doesn’t like that his brother’s across the room, talking to a human who could probably kill him without even trying. But he doesn’t stand or come over, doesn’t yell or threaten or demand you leave him alone.

He looks lost.

Red’s hazy eyes wander the room aimlessly, briefly flinching away from his brother. He frees a hand from the tangle of yarn his sudden tension made of the mitten he’s knitting, runs his phalanges over his smashed grin briefly. Oh. He’d pulled the knitting needle out of the loops and palmed it backhand against his ulna. Like a weapon. He takes it back into his right hand again, holds both needles together as his fingers tremble faintly.

There’s a click as he turns the false tooth aside, and he sticks one of his fingers in the jagged hole in his grin with his mouth behind it. Red’s eyes dart to you suddenly, and he yanks the sharp tip of his phalanx out of his mouth with a _snick_ sound as his face goes blank. The tooth’s back in place in a blink.

Red pulls a full glass out of his pocket and drains it. It disappears quickly, although you can see that it’s something colorless. He sets the empty on the tabletop, shudders and sighs. The texture of his reddened eyes changes, too. All your breath leaves you in a slow, tight exhale that strums through a deep twinge in your soul.

Red and Edge aren’t quiet and mysterious.

Grillby’s been keeping them heavily sedated this entire time. Since The Incident; possible even before then.

“thing about that is… ya don’t so much ‘lose’ as ‘die’,” Red’s saying slowly. He’s jarringly oblivious to the thoughts racing through your head, and possibly across your face if he bothered looking. He doesn’t bother, and his voice plods out heavily. There’s maybe a tiny bit more gravel to it, but otherwise it really is Sans’s voice. Because he’s Sans. “but, uh. you got enough g, you can pay em off. If you...” Red trails off, tilts his skull at you. “what?”

“Couldn’t they just take it after you’re dead?”

Red huffs in surprisingly sincere amusement. He grins fondly, like you asked a good question. He does a slow socket-blink and frees a hand to gesture with.

“k. so whatcha do is wait your turn, take it out n hold it. tell em it’s everythin’ ya got.” Red makes a gesture under his deeply ridged chin, then keeps his fist there. He's listing to the side a bit, and you're not too sure he means to. He tries a wink, snickers with more success. “they spare you…? ya give em the g. they do _aaanything_ else, you eat it. helps ya take the hit, too, get a chance ta rally. might get lucky.”

His hand falls back to the yarn and needles, resumes its ceaseless motion. His almost-patient, instructional tone makes you think of the way MK had told the story earlier. Like he’s had to explain this to children.

“Does that work?”

He just shrugs.

You let out a slow, sad breath, but Red’s staring off into space and continuing.

“sometimes, even if ya eat yer g you can come to an understanding,” Red rambles vaguely. He’s looking at the middle distance like it’s distracting him, although his knitting doesn’t falter. “jus’ bodies, but most’ll take you up on it. might even get a lil fun out of it y’self, depending.” Red finally glances over, looks at your nauseated expression and scowls like he just remembered who he’s talking to. “better than dead, sweetheart. sides, lotta folks go out lookin’ for just that anyhow, money or a fuck. most a the time that’s wh… who you’re gonna meet out there anyways. someone who wants a little action, blow off some livv.”

You have no idea what a “livv” is. Or maybe he said “love”, but that doesn’t make any sense either unless it’s one of his weird euphemisms for being horny. He’s got more of those than anyone you’ve ever met.

“you tellin’ me monsters here don’t meet up like that?” He looks very perturbed by the possibility, and you don’t bother pointing out that you didn’t actually say anything.

“No, no….they do encounters. You know they do, you’ve seen it.” You hum thoughtfully. “For...almost the same reason, maybe. It’s a way to check up with someone, make a connection if you want. Express yourself. A chance to give or get some money, too.”

He makes a scoffing sound, looks back down at his hands. “an’ if they can’t pay?”

You frown, thinking about the first encounter you’d had with Sans, when he’d shown you how to Check monsters. And there was the one he’d used to show off his moves to you against Gerson. They’d just ended, and that had been that.

“Nothing happens, as far as I know,” you sigh. “I mean...almost everyone has money, but even if they didn’t no one would ever ask them to do _that_. And...” you trail off in horror, eyes flashing to the group of children.

“stripes’re exempt,” Red assures you hurriedly, despite a disembodied pang of bitterness you feel. “supposed ta be, anyhow.” His face goes carefully blank. “asgore didn’t take too kindly to people hurting kids, but nothing can really stop kids from beatin’ on each other. and…some people ain’t got no fucking scruples, anyways.”

“And you do?” You wince internally when you hear that out loud. Yeesh. So much for making nice.

Red huffs through his teeth, sockets narrowing at you. Rather than being offended, he seems to think that’s a fair point. The fuzziness of his eyes makes his aspect seem sleepy, but you’re not too sure it is. “scruples are fer people with options,” he says bitterly. He looks down at the finished mitten, shrugs his shoulders roughly like he’s throwing off a comforting hand, even though you didn’t offer one. He ties it off, uses a fingertip that’s apparently sharper than you thought possible (is he _biting_ them sharp? what?) to cut the delicate yarn, and adds it to the pile. Then he holds his hand out and starts loading the needle with the start of another, just like that. You try and change the subject.

“Did you ever make those cigarettes or whatever?”

Red shakes his skull at his knitting. Seems distracted.

“cigars,” he says rustily. “didn’t bother in the end.” He wiggles a distal phalanx between yarn and needle, and the corner of his mouth he can still move twitches. “figure i’ll sell it off...wait fer a good turnaround...” He changes the way he’s holding his knitting, pinches along the loops, and just starts unraveling it. He continues after a minute, like he’s sleep-talking.

“…not much point. grillbz never lets me have em in here, an’ p—”

He stares at the thread he’s pulling, goes still. Another realization clicks into place in your brain, a bunch of small observations most people call ‘intuition’ but probably are just bits of sensory information filed away until they become useful.

Red knew _a_ Grillby before. That Grillby is dead, and has been for quite some time. You look over at Edge again, and this time that rim of confusion around his stony-faced bluster coagulates into a helpless expression of unimaginable loss.

Wherever Red and Edge came from, you don’t think they were in the _middle_ of a bad time. They rode that shit out until the bitter end, and only bailed when all hope was gone. Gone enough for someone who is essentially Papyrus to leave everyone he’s ever known to their fates.

Or maybe they had already met them. After all, it’s obvious these brothers didn’t leave by mistake. Your chest feels tight still, considering that to them….they’re in a funhouse mirror of their old lives, surrounded by the oblivious ghosts of their dead friends, enemies, and loved ones, suspended in haunted limbo above the underground and below an absolute void. Time is different, gravity is different...and all they have is each other, which seems to be a mixed comfort and irritant to them.

Your heart softens despite you. The only thing worse than having to fight for their lives tooth and nail from the second they got here is probably exactly what’s happening. No wonder Grillby’s got them zonked. His gentle, offhand remark you’d overheard during the foray outside, Red and Edge seeming to ignore each other except for the fact that Red’s arm looked glued to Edge’s hip as they took each step perfectly in sync, takes on a new light. Grillby had told them they could stay over as long as they liked, regardless of what Sans and Papyrus had said.

You decide to do the monster thing and pretend Red didn’t say anything, returning to the previous topic.

“Asgore still wanted to protect kids? Seems kind of hypocritical of him. They’d just grow up and kill each other.”

“fuckin’ _asgore_,” he gripes with more defeat than heat. “seemed like a good idea at first, i bet. someone falls down n dusts, all that jus’ goes to waste. when you off em, you get ta keep it. like getting paid, but...” Red makes a noise almost like a burp. “keeps it in circulation. heard from a few crusters that it was...i dunno. ceremonial at first? like...ya get tired, go to new home. had these places where they’d off ya. but the people who did the offing started goin' crazy, fluffybuns included. started talkin’ bout some monsters jus’ being too weak ta hack it, sayin’ it’s yer duty ta make sure everyone’s _strong_ enough.”

“Sounds like your basic violent fascist checklist, yeah,” you comment. Red just huffs.

“Edge seems pretty quiet,” you try, watching Red finish picking things apart and start actively knitting again. “I know Papyrus told him to, um. Control his voice. But he knows how to _not_ use it, right? And just talk without it?”

Red’s sockets blink slowly, one after the other. It should be funny, but it’s actually kind of...not.

“yeah,” he says absently. Nothing else follows it.

“Are you okay?” you ask again like a complete and total dumbass. Red looks into your eyes for a long time, quiet and still.

“’m not a good person,” Red says without any emphasis, and he’s not baiting you either. Like it’s a simple fact. “…so. dunno why you’re so interested in talkin’ like we’re pals.”

You don’t quite move your eyes towards Edge, but Red’s face twists with killing rage for a brief second anyways, right before it snuffs out like it never existed. Instead there’s just flat despair, tempered with something a little like an animal stuck in a trap. Whatever internal process he’s just gone through remains a mystery to you.

It occurs to you that if nothing else, Red could always just stay at Grillby’s forever like Lola.

“scruples are fer people with options,” Red repeats hollowly. “but if anyone fuckin’ _tried_, he did. so _don’t you…_ don’t…” He makes a weird, noncommittal little grunt. You notice he doesn’t try to claim that his brother _is_ a good person. Red is Sans, so that absence is really saying something. But the funny thing is, he seems under the impression that you _are_.

“You’re Sans, right?”

He gives you a nonplussed look, and you roll your eyes.

“I mean, I ~know what I did~, and so do you. Or does that not...” you trail off, because that’s not it. You let out a short noise of disbelief. “You didn’t even bother to fucking _look_?”

So of course he does, since he’s utterly shitfaced and you’re baiting the crap out of him. His face goes still.

“We’re not soft here,” you remind him huskily after nearly five minutes of shivering through some significantly unpleasant sensations and associations. It reminds you of the first time Sans had one of his insomnia freakouts in your vicinity, the night of ARTBALL. Sans had explained to you it’s not exactly Judgement (which is more like an encounter), but it’s not far short of it.

Welp. Red’s Sans, alright. And the thing is, you _know_ Sans. You know what he’s survived, how he deals with things, and what he thinks of himself. You can’t help but tremble under the weight of wondering what about Red is the same, any more than you can help being jarred by the differences. You wonder if Sans’s choices affect Red and vice versa, and then you forcibly stop wondering.

All the complications that neither of you are ready to think about yet lie there silently between you like a lead turd.

“guess me shankin' that bun didn’t come ‘s much a surprise’s i thought,” Red grates resentfully instead.

You shrug. No one had seen exactly what had happened, after all. One second Blu had been saying something to Red. The next, Blu was bleeding out clear magic on the floor, and Edge had his brother scooped up, whispering something very intensely against Red’s skull as Red shook, gazed unseeing at nothing. Grillby was there in a flash, speaking calmly as he did something to Blu that made him not bleeding anymore. Blu was fine, they’d all talked for a long time, and then Grillby had talked with Red and Edge for even longer than that.

“Real fights are always over before they start,” you say with incongruous glibness, and there’s the loose-eyed surprise in his sockets again. Neither of you mention the empty glass on the table. “But here’s the thing...” you add slowly, thinking hard. Grillby had told you later that it had been a misunderstanding, and that words here don’t have the same meanings Red is used to. The details turned out to be none of your business.

“I don’t think you’re going to have to do that here.” You don’t promise. “Not if you stick to monster districts.” And aren’t the one who started shit, you don’t say. Yet. Might have to save some sage advice nuggets for later, after all. “This is going to be hard to believe, but. No one expects you to be okay with any of this, either.”

“of what?”

“Being here? Being alive? Existence?”

Red gets distracted by two kids who sit on the floor and start playing some kind of card game practically underneath Edge’s chunky-heeled boots. His expression reminds you of a cat you once saw who had a mouse crawl right up and sit on its head.

“Those kids weren’t taught to be afraid of someone who looks different than they’re used to,” you try explaining. “They’re used to being able to solve their own problems, even if it's by asking anyone nearby for help or information when they need it. They’re allowed to yell, and do things on their own, and take up space. They’re used to being taken seriously.” You sigh, because it’s hard to explain. You just have to see it. “It makes them annoying as all fuck, but it also makes them more...able to survive. They can _handle_ things, even when it gets bad. If they’re hurting, they don’t keep it a secret. And if I have to listen to some toddler give me a condescending lecture on the proper use of an umbrella, well, it’s not about _me_, you know?”

You dart a look at Red. He’s confused, but he’s listening. That’s more than you expected. The kids clear up the game almost as soon as it starts, because Fuku's calling them to the bar to begin a demonstration. The moment they've all been waiting for, apparently.

“Boss monster kids are a lot more independent than the adults are. Everything about the monsters here… to me, it’s always been like seeing the answers when I don’t know the questions. Everything I understand about them always happens backwards.”

Red gives you a very odd look.

“blue, huh?”

You snort in surprise. “Yeah, actually.”

Red’s expression sours.

“you trying to pull some ‘now you got a chance ta be happy’ shit on me? cause that ship's _sailed_, sweetheart.”

Your laughter seems to surprise him. “Don’t be ridiculous.” That surprises him even more. “But maybe if you play your cards right, you have a chance to be well-fed and well-fucked, which is as much as any of us can hope for. Enough to face another day, if we get lucky enough to have one.”

Red makes a short bark of joyless laughter; the grin that grudgingly follows it is equal parts amused and unfathomably bitter. Unexpectedly, he tosses his knitting as-is on the tabletop, lies down, and rolls until he flops into the heavily-padded berth the under-the table space has become.

He displaces a puff of bone-scented air; you wonder how much longer it’ll be before Grillby decides to clean up Red’s nasty little pigeon nest. There’s a lot of paper trash and empty glasses under there. And it’s a good thing monster food doesn’t spoil, since he’s been hoarding overflow from his phone under a pillow. Lola told you he’d started stealing people’s money off the bar too, then stopped when some of the patrons started also leaving handfuls of G on _his_ table now and then, which apparently freaked him out pretty good. She’d also implied that Red and Edge have been arguing about something, but also that the details are none of your business. Again.

Red's half-asleep voice rumbles out from under the table.

“ya forgot _well-rested_, but hey. two outta three ain’t bad. wouldn’t say no to a baker’s dozen, neither…” His immediate, inebriated snore drowns out your snickering as you shimmy back out of the booth seat and wander in search of Grillby, who might be willing to find you something sweet to eat. Or anything to eat, actually, since you’re only now remembering you didn’t do that. Too busy flapping your gums at people.

You wander over to the bottleneck area near the busing station, the long stretch of booths, the bathroom, and the fire door. Your approach is slow, but when Edge notices it, he suddenly finds a reason to go back to table nine and saunters past arrogantly without looking at you.

You roll your eyes in exasperation and lean against the wall next to Grillby, whose not-a-smile broadens at your arrival. You duck your head and keep your voice down, not wanting to disrupt Fuku’s complicated explanation of monster-style drugs, complete with big, theatrical gestures the kids are transfixed by.

“Hey, I forgot to-” A flaming hand is already offering you a basket of loaded fries, the chopsticks you like to eat them with tucked in the side. “Show off,” you snerk, and he makes his quiet little crackle-laugh.

You watch Fuku elaborately demonstrating the ceremony with the row of soul-color drinks to the kids. She makes it all sound a lot more mysterious and cool than her parent does. It takes a lot longer, too. Grillby tends to be terse and a little self-deprecating about what he does, but Fuku’s got that spark of drama the kids go nuts for. You push some of the stuff on your fries around, and see that there’s some slices of that red ball thing you like and also kind of hate in there. You stare at Grillby.

“What are these things, anyway?” you ask.

Grillby glances down to see you indicating the slices with the tips of your chopsticks, tinted bright red around the rim and white and flavorless inside.

…_Sans said you love those…?_

“I have feelings about them,” you protest, crunching eagerly away at the little slices covered in gravy and what might be bacon bits. Like radish maybe, or...water chestnuts. Not as _firm_ as those, though. They’re like...mushy-crisp. Chew-_ish_? “But what _are_ they?”

…_.Reverse-pickled snail ovotestis_.

You look down into your fries, sigh hard enough a little bit of crispy fry-mush flies off a tooth and returns from whence it came. Of course that’s what they are. Then you look back at Grillby, who seems bemused.

“But you hate them, right?”

He gives you a baffled look, then extends a finger into your basket. One of the slices disappears with a hot little _tss_.

…_.I’m fine with them_, he says, still bemused. _...the texture’s...interesting?_

Your face crumples.

“How did I go so long without realizing Sans is a dick sometimes, Grillby?”

One of the kids titters, and you blush because you said that kind of loud. Fuku gives her parent a Look, because he’s laughing at you just as loud. Kind of stealing her thunder a bit. You shovel some more extra special loaded fries in your face sheepishly, and Fuku begins to lead the kids away toward Lola. Angie goes along too, as well as someone you’re noticing is probably a parent as well. Chaperones or whatever.

_...__I don’t think Sans is… a __**dick**__, exactly…_ Grillby says, chuckling much more quietly even though the kids are a ways away now. Fuku’s got shit handled, and Grillby seems really pleased by that. Also like he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself now, with a big dash of glad you’re here. It makes you feel all warm and fuzzy.

“Sometimes I think about how it must have been down there,” you muse with your mouth full. “Like...one time, it occurred to me that it’d be hard to lie down and die with like 20 people annoying you all the time. Sans annoying you is probably as effective as 20 people, I’m guessing.”

Grillby laughs some more. _…Sans would definitely agree with you_, he crackles fondly. _...But Sans also likes attention. His...altruistic motivation is limited, as are all his forms of motivation._

“What does annoying people have to do with that?”

Grillby tilts his glasses at you archly. _...Well. We’re talking about him, aren’t we?_

You narrow your eyes in understanding. “Not anymore,” you decide, and he giggles. “So. The pointy brothers.

_...Yes?_

“Are you, like...keeping them drugged for a reason?”

Grillby gives you an extremely odd look. _…I don’t __**keep**__ anyone anything._ He looks over at Fuku, Lola, and the gaggle of kids. _...Perhaps...you would __benefit__ from listening to __this__ part of the story as well?_

You blush again. “But...” You look at Lola, then at table nine with Edge standing upright against the booth partition. Standing guard while his brother sleeps, but he’s got that half-empty glass in the same position as earlier. And several empties have appeared next to him on the table, too.

Grillby sighs, rubs his fingers on the front of his vest. _…I asked him if he would like his own table, but he vehemently refused._ Grillby flicker-shakes his head, crosses his arms again. _…He will not lie down in his brother’s mess, but he also will not encourage him to clean it. He will not __even __acknowledge __the mess__ if his brother is present, either. They are...very confusing._

“I think Edge doesn’t want Red to be embarrassed, maybe,” you say, and Grillby frowns in thought. You put your fry basket and chopsticks in the busing station at the end of the bar, and Grillby’s pouting when you come back.

…_.__Edge is very mean_, Grillby protests. _...He says many humiliating things to his brother. They...argue._

“I’ve heard. But they’re really out of it, dude. Like falling-down drunk. Is that really the best way to deal with it?”

Grillby shakes his head again. _...__I __don’t decide that_, he says, trying his best to overcome the gulf between you, just like always._ ...I__ decide wh__ich__ drinks they have access to, and what behaviors are acceptable. And to...what degree._ He sighs tightly. _...I do not decide whether or not they drink it, __or when,__ or whether they stay or leave._

“Are you glad they’re here?” you try instead.

Grillby’s aspect relaxes. _….Yes,_ he admits._ Yes_, he repeats more firmly. _…This is... a __**safe**__ place. I think that is...part of their problem._

“They don’t know how to be safe,” you whisper. “They only know how to stab people when they don’t know what else to do. Stab first, ask questions later.”

_...__Sort of._ _They need time to figure it out. I spoke to them for….quite some time. About many things. And I asked if they would like help practicing how to feel safe._

“Did you say it like that?”

_...__No_, he says with a little smirk.

“I’d be surprised people are okay with having their kids here, but they seem more scared of the kids than the opposite.” He shrugs, and you let it drop. “I thought you’d be supervising more, but Fuku really knows what she’s doing, huh? Really takes after you.” Pointing that out usually pleases him, but for some reason, it makes him pensive.

…_What Fuku and I do is the same, and yet also completely different._ You shake your head. You don’t know what he means. …_Because we have chosen this path for different reasons_, he elaborates uncomfortably.

“You don’t leave here.”

_...No._

“Even when you want to."

…_.Especially when I want to._ It’s a barely-there whisper, husky as hell. Your face gets hot. For some reason his answer reminds you of his bedroom talk. There’s not much of it, but hoo boy. He makes it count.

“How long does this shebang go on for?”

_...Many hours. Drinks will be offered, and they are unlikely to leave until the effects have worn off. Some of them will sleep here tonight, if they need to. _

He doesn’t ask if you will, but it’s close enough to maintain the temperature of your face. You hold up the wall next to Grillby for a while, not doing much but enjoying the literal and figurative warmth of his company. Grillby’s kinda got a stick up his ass, but it turns out that’s not as much of a dealbreaker for you as it used to be. Especially now you know so intimately what’s behind the prickly comments and campy deflections. He’s just a big ol nerd who really, really wants people to be happy.

You’d been expecting that uptightness to stick around in bed, but...it really hadn’t, because he’s different when you’re there. It just turned to shyness. And yeah, he’s quiet, but so eager to please. Like he could get off just looking at you, and… oh, that’s right. He actually kind of did, didn’t he? The last time you all did the sexing. _You_ didn’t do it yet, but you know what happened. Remembering things that you haven’t exactly experienced yet’s always kinda weird, but you’re getting used to it. It’s not any weirder than having a lover you can’t touch, but you, Sans and Grillby sure as heck find all sorts of fun ways to make it work.

Sans has been a little disappointed that his genitalia hasn’t come out again since the first time you all had sex together, but you can tell Grillby doesn’t mind, and neither do you. In fact, last time Grillby had wanted to sit back and _watch_ how you pleasure Sans when he’s just bones. He’d let Sans’s skull rest on something like his lap, easing heat into Sans’s fused mandible while you stroked his femurs, palmed his sacrum, fingered gently behind his pubic symphysis. Then you’d switched places, Grillby showing you how Sans likes _him_ to touch his pelvis. Sans seemed willing to let his disappointment go in favor of enjoying the game, wriggling with renewed delight at the pleasure and attention.

Never one to turn down the opportunity for a little one-upping, you’d taken Sans’s bare pubic bones into your mouth, the intensity of their stored heat from Grillby’s touch absorbing the moisture from your tongue like the shell of a recently boiled egg. That remembered taste, more of a texture than flavor, makes your mouth water just thinking about it. He’d gotten so _wet_, moaning and shivering until he’d begged Grillby to tug him.

You’d ended up touching yourself body and soul while Sans showed you one of the ways he pleasures Grillby. He’d cradled both their souls in his hands, then put them inside Grillby’s body. His ceaselessly weaving phalanges dipped and circled between them, making you shudder with remembered sensations. It’d been strange and beautiful to see Sans’s knees spraddled out unevenly on the bed, front-down and floating on Grillby shimmering under him, hands and souls visible through wavering flame hovering over the blankets.

All tangled up with each other, they both looked to the side and watched _you_ the whole time, utterly riveted by the way touching your body made you feel in your soul. Grillby’s amorphous form seemed to cradle Sans in his arms, but he also coiled around his spine, sent runnels of flame down his femurs, let his lower body sink right inside him. Sans’s pelvis had moved idly against a part of Grillby made solid just for him to rub on, both of them shuddering and moaning as Sans’s magic shed into the flames.

You’d known they pushed their magic at the same time by the hitching little breaths Sans always makes, by Grillby’s white-hot sigh you remember first hearing in Sans’s soul. You’d come for your own touch while watching them; pushed over the edge by the way they both looked at you as they did it. Grillby’s awed expression pressed under his lover’s sideways, sweaty skull, Sans’s bare, fire-encased pelvis jerking in sympathetic time with yours as he spent magic right into Grillby’s gently writhing body.

You cut yourself off right here, because the line between remembering it and actually experiencing it is starting to blur, and you’re still in public. Your hot face starts to sweat, because there’s actually no reason you have to _stay_ in public. No reason at all.

And isn’t _that_ an interesting idea.

You look slightly up at Grillby’s profile above his crisp white collar, watching life bustle all around him as he waits for someone to need him. The gulf stretches bittersweet as he stands in unaccustomed idleness, knowing everyone’s needs are met for the moment. You can’t tell if he’s basking in the satisfaction of a job well done, or if he feels at loose ends without someone calling for him. The look on his not-exactly-a-face is hard to describe, and you’re not Sans. But it makes your chest ache sweetly nonetheless.

You mean to say something like that, but what comes out instead is, “Why do you have to be so tall all the time?” Your voice sounds awfully rough to your ears, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

Grillby laughs like he always does, because he gets a kick out of you. Your weird questions, your jokes, your prickliness, your kindness, your long, meandering talks together… they all give him a tight feeling in his soul like a log gripped by fire from the inside. And there’s a reason you know that, of course. But you could use a reminder.

…_I don’t __**have**__ to be…_ His usual joke trails off; he starts and flares when you try brushing your fingers along the sleeve of his shirt. It’s too hot to touch for more than a split second, but you make the most of it. He turns toward you in surprise, but whatever he sees on your face takes the words out of his voice into an indistinct wheeze of air, and his gaze falls. Grillby’s face whitens as the silence stretches, gains a fulsome potential.

“Wanna go fool around?”

Four whispered words is all it takes to strip every last bit of stiffness from his posture. The glib expression he always keeps in place for his feelings to peek from behind falls away completely, and a slow, pale glow flows up above his snugly bowtied collar. After staring at the floor like it did a trick for a long moment, Grillby turns to look at you sidelong and bashful.

He reaches behind himself to untie the strings of his apron.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyyyy wanna see a drawing? Choose well...
> 
> https://www.deviantart.com/gildedpleasure/art/and-the-rest-821539190
> 
> Because I won’t answer any questions about it if you look  
Whoo! Sure is a lot of not much at all going on, aaaAAanyhow who wants to fuck some fire


	8. The Mortifying Ordeal Of Being Known

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *You let Grillby choose the music...again.  
*You should know better by now
> 
> Bad English – When I See You Smile  
https://youtu.be/cu6pclWsxzs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp! It took some doing but if you’d like the first Sans/Reader/Grillby experience, it’s over here:
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/17952167/chapters/51978262
> 
> Because it happened back then. If you want to read it, it’s up to you which one you decide to read first, although the experience of each may differ slightly, depending.

“Has Sans ever…explained me?”

…_That __is…__certainly a__ question_, Grillby whispers softly from as close to you as your body can bear. You’re lying together in his fireproof bed. He’s naked and shameless, a low rill of flame crackling with intimacy and full of quivery little smiles; you’re just regular human naked. _…Care to elaborate?_

Your near-silent snort of amusement makes Grillby’s face flicker softly. You watch as his body carries the shudder outward from the place your breath touched, shimmering all the way down to where he burns ceaselessly only a few inches away from your feet.

“I know we already kind of had a first time...” You trail off, mesmerized by heat and light, whispers and closeness. “But this is the first time...for me, I guess?”

…_.Well. It’s true you haven’t asked me to go with you alone before…._

“More than that,” you try. Grillby’s expression’s almost painfully sincere, so different from how he is outside this room. He’s such a private person, holding himself slightly apart even in the midst of the cheerful chaos he curates.

…_The time issues?_

“Sort of.” You’re laying on your belly, head turned to the side on a folded arm. “It feels like you were right about it being more intimate with just two. I mean, I like the sex with all of us.” Another amused puff of breath from you, another flicker. Hmmm, he likes it. Nice. “Obviously. But even with souls, it’s more focused on the sex part? Two seems more like…you _experience_ each other?”

…_I think I know what you mean?_ A soft white glow coalesces inside him, moves outward toward his edges. It changes depending on how he’s sitting or lying. Like a sexy lava lamp. He’s got the lights off, and the walls dance with mysterious shadows and flickering reflections of Grillby’s lithe, amorphous body. So do the draped, bulky forms and slinky tubes of the stills, massively occupying more than half of the room, but those are behind you right now with the way you’re lying.

…_.__It might be because all together…i__t’s a lot __going on at once__. An __**enjoyable**__ lot, of course, but...you and I are a bit more….easily overwhelmed than Sans…_

You whisper another laugh, watch the hypnotically arousing response. “Yeah. We can’t all be power bottoms.” You can see he doesn’t know what you mean by that. You shift, stretch out a little more. God, it’s warm in here. “Sans likes intense stuff, even likes feeling overwhelmed sometimes. He enjoys challenging himself, finding out how much he can take.”

…_I see your point._

You grin at each other in commiseration. “But I’m not really like that. And Sans can sort of...let loose easier, because he’s used to being with both of us. But me and you...” You make a self-deprecating grimace.

Grillby does a barely-audible little whoosh; an attempt at a laugh that falls short. _…__It took a long time for me to be able to...__I, I have difficulty with… _He smiles sheepishly, does his self-directed eyeroll impression. _…W__ell. Sans showed you._

Asking for what he wants. Being vulnerable. Wishing someone else would be responsible for what happens, even if it’s something Grillby might not like, or something really kinky. Maybe even especially then. Grillby has a hard time feeling like he deserves what he wants, so he wishes someone would just make him _take_ it. Something he once hoped Sans might do, but Sans doesn’t want to.

Just like how Sans sometimes wants to feel punished, but Grillby doesn’t want to. Grillby and Sans both have some shame attached to those feelings, but they help each other feel how they want to feel, compromising in ways they both enjoy. And sometimes they both put their souls away and play-wrestle to make each other cry out and struggle, helping each other at the same time.

Thing is...you and Grillby don’t really have those kind of options. You only want to do what he’s comfortable with, but being known can be a scary proposition. Even when you’ve known someone for years, opening up can be scary and difficult. And that’s a boat you and Grillby know like the… Well. You were thinking back of your hands, but Grillby’s a ball of fire who only has hands sometimes, and due to your physical differences he’s obligated to keep them to himself when he does.

You look up at what passes for Grillby’s face. You’re the one who asked him to sneak off with you, so you decide to make the second move as well as the first. Each of you giving as much as you’re comfortable with...and it turns out you’re more comfortable than you expected.

“I can’t call you,” you say quietly; just a statement. “And I can’t see you the way a monster can. I don’t know if you’ll even feel...me just looking. But I want to see you, if you want to show me. I have to just say so, since I can’t...” Can’t even touch his body, can’t get close enough to feel the resonance of his soul’s yearning, or its absence.

_...I know._ Quiet and earnest, although it’s not specific what he knows. All of it, maybe.

“It’s hard for you.”

He nods.

“Me too,” you whisper. Watching Grillby satisfies some deeply primal urge in your brain, makes you feel relaxed and safe. The sensation of his proximity on your face is so strong it’s almost a touch, a solid wall of heat even when you close your eyes.

You start to feel like some ancient human hunched in a cave, the presence of fire making it into a _home_. Safety, warmth, and light. A presence that drives out harm, warns those that intend it that this place is protected by fire.

“You make me feel so…safe,” you whisper, dazed by warmth and desire.

Cooler air draws in like an embrace from behind you, an atmospheric shift slow around your damp skin towards Grillby’s gently shuddering body as he inhales. He pales and brightens in for an exquisite moment as he gathers his focus inward, and searing white fireflies careen wildly in his center as he lets it back out in a soft, crackling whoosh. A sigh.

…_Do you want to see me?_

Your heart clenches sweetly. He’s really putting himself out there. You have to breathe out slow to keep from moaning, manage to whisper _yes_, along with a little encouragement. You watch his focus go inward, his body shimmering and sparking. Little motes of combusting magic fly up toward the fireproof ceiling. Your eyelashes flutter as the heat intensifies for a moment, and then a low runnel of flame lines the coverlet toward you.

A robust white heart, point up, follows its trail. Its unyieldingly steady glow somehow fails to interact with Grillby’s incandescence, silvering the coverlet over the much warmer light Grillby’s mercurial body casts.

“Oh,” you whisper, utterly transfixed. “Oh, wow.” It’s nothing like Sans’s soul. It is also somehow exactly the same, except for the absence of cyan-yellow iridescence. Your cupped hand already hovers near it, a gesture both protective and oddly reverent.

_...It’s just me_, Grillby crackles quietly. His gaze closes for a tight moment, and he lets out a soft, slow creak as he looks back at you. _...Will you touch me?_

“Yeah.” He offers himself to you, and your hand moves carefully towards him. Your fingers slide right in.

Grillby cries out and shimmers all over, sparks and spits of flame curling off to float into nonexistence above him. He’s strong, yes, but you’re human. It’s a _lot_, an overwhelming sense of _presence_. A crackling gush of air flows out of him out in no particular direction; maybe all of them at once. And then Grillby reaches out to touch himself along with you, because he wants to make sure he doesn’t just release his boundaries and spill out all over the bed. He huffs out a slightly desperate little laugh. That would be bad.

He sighs again as he touches himself calm, loose with relief and delight in your presence. You draw in a deep, shuddering breath. When you let it out, you can see the wave of it move through his body.

You lean up on an elbow and do it again, because he feels it. Tastes it, in his own way; particles of your substance blown into him to be consumed by his ceaseless combustion. You spend a while sending teasing streams and playful puffs of air from your lungs into his body to make him gasp and moan. He lets you know it feels (literally) cool to him, refreshing and...fragranced? It’s nice and relaxing for both of you, although you lie back down with a heady giggle when you start to get a little dizzy.

You had more of a point than he realized before. This isn’t the first time you’ve touched him for _him_, but with everything else going on, you missed something important. Essential, really. You want to know him, and he wants you to… to _experience_ him, as you said earlier.

Grillby’s broad smile is guileless and sweet, already drunk with pleasure as he grasps and plucks at the bedding. Grillby’s never still. He really can’t be, but you’ve got his magic so agitated he’s feeling downright wiggly. He shimmers and groans with it, letting himself be rolled into the intensity of your sheer presence for one more delicious moment. Then he relaxes open into your touch, lays himself bare with a sigh.

Grillby is a murderer.

And yeah, you know that. But he’s not sure you entirely understand him in _context_. To you it seems that he and Fuku ‘do the same thing’, but it is not the same thing at all, despite the form it takes.

Grillby is a murderer, and Grillby’s is the prison from which he is serving his life sentence.

But wait, you might say. Grillby’s is a _community_ center, an event hall, a place of emotional and physical healing for an entire species, and is possibly a keystone of monster society as it currently stands. It is a crossroads; a place of eased transitions.

To which the answer is: exactly.

A lifetime that would have been spent very much otherwise has been utterly dedicated to making it just that. Grillby would have been a totally different person, lived an entirely different life if humans hadn’t committed systemic genocide against fire elementals, and Grillby hadn’t gone past the point of self-defense and knowingly burned up some noncombatants.

None of those things can be undone. Mistakes cannot be unmade, but there are many directions one can choose to step from the starting/ending point of terrible harm, given and received.

This role is the reckoning that Grillby chose: to provide what is needed for the rest of his existence.

Grillby isn’t human. Monsters had options for these kinds of things, even before Sans was one of them. Grillby scrounged what information he could from the ashes of his people, and laid to rest the person he _would_ have been if those things had not happened. He took up a traditional path for someone in his circumstances.

Grillby knows some humans take other humans and throw them in a hole to rot for the least offenses as well as the worst ones, and that it’s pretty much meaningless. They do the same thing to people who’ve done nothing at all, to people they just don’t like. Or they force them to work without pay, mechanically assembling items without souls, objects that mean nothing, are nothing. Their lives are hollowed out to become vessels for nothing, and the ones who benefit let themselves believe that waste is justice.

Grillby’s life is not punishment, nor is it exactly penance, or does it have an equivalent that you could really understand in a single word. Grillby knowingly and purposefully took on something that, for the person he _used_ to be...was almost unimaginably difficult. The closest thing you might be able to understand is…

Grillby took _responsibility_.

For what he’d done, for who he was and who he would become, for the relationships he would form and dissolve; he took preemptive responsibility for countless others who might require someone to take responsibility for _them_. Their traumas and problems, their dysfunction and loneliness, their pain and fear, their mistakes and their violence. For those who need help back on the path to taking responsibility for themselves, as well as those who might not ever be able to pick up a burden so heavy ever again.

Grillby touches himself wide and shows you even more, opens with a soft moan as his body stutters and shifts. Your understanding blooming inside him is cool, almost _wet_, a thrilling sensation even without the little hints of danger and fear stoking his desire even hotter.

Grillby knows fears many monsters now don’t remember. Fear and distrust of humans, the inherent unease in genuinely _not_ knowing someone. Grillby’s (taking responsibility→_obligation_) requires him to be where he is needed; Grillby is often one of the first monsters humans meet. Despite everything, this is not something he would have chosen, had it not been for the (taking responsibility→_community_: an impression of a golden net that connects everyone he knows to everyone they know, to everyone _they_ do until it is _literally_ everyone).

Grillby’s never let a human touch him like this before; you know that now, and you also remember. You let him feel how honored you are by his trust, and he shimmers and sobs with it for a sweet, sweaty while.

Your fingers move, caressing the beautifully impossible substance of the stolid, enduring soul in your fingers. The silly, prickly, patient-just-for-you bartender who’s also a lot of other things. You give him a light brush of what he’s meant to _you_, and he bunches up on the bed and goes white inside, white motes roiling through him as he lets out a raw cry. You ease up quickly, soothe him back out into a slow-flickering rill of flame opposite you. Then you let Grillby feel what you want to happen, and he sobs with how much he wants that, too. Something you’d discovered by accident, never even considered as a possibility.

You can touch each other inside souls.

Breathing heavily, you draw it out, but neither of you is as patient as Sans. A brief coiling dance of your fingertip flirting with the tendril of flame inside him to make sure, and he surges eagerly toward it. You both cry out when your fingers brush fire. The touch lingers enough to burn under usual circumstances, but inside Grillby this way, it doesn’t. You don’t know if it counts, if it’s real or imagined, you don’t know why it’s possible...there are a lot of things you don’t know, but there’s only one thing you want to know right now.

You want to know Grillby, and with a flickering sigh, he lets you in even more.

In a way, what you’re experiencing is the closest _equivalent_ you have for Grillby’s situation. “Prison” isn’t really accurate because his situation is voluntary, but that doesn’t mean it is easy. Staying in one place is not comfortable for an elemental. His kind is inclined to roam, and Grillby as an individual more so even than most.

If he’s honest, he barely remembers his youth at this point, being older than a fair amount of extant dirt. Mostly harmless amusements, jokes worse than Sans’s (he’d named himself at birth like all of his type of elementals do, and he stands by it), and a lot of ceaseless movement through a world very different than this one. But after what he had done, his only path was to gather obligations to others to weigh him down, and keep him in place. The burning restlessness inside him could then be catalyzed into creativity, curation, and nurturing.

Sans takes him places now and then when he needs the sky, the earth, the intoxicating breeze of distances flowing through his body and stoking him white-hot. Not a prison, but in position, ensconced to create a safe place for people to exist as they need to, for as long as _he_ exists. Because that is what Grillby does, in a completely different way than anything you’re used to. Grillby’s is a community center, a restaurant, a mental hospital. It is a hotel, a singles bar, and a dispensary. Grillby’s is a home, a nightclub, and a halfway house. Grillby’s is the hearth, and he is the fire that resides there to make it one.

Grillby’s is what the people who come here need it to be when they walk in.

Grillby squirms facedown on the bed next to you as he withdraws his touch again, panting and flickering with the intensity of your presence. He lets you touch alone for a bit because it turns out he likes the rawness of it, the sheer strength and immediacy of _you_. You feel hesitance quivering around your fingers; Grillby lets out a little sob and lets you catch a glimpse.

He wants to be known; he’s terrified to be known.

Your breath shudders out hard.

He’s so much like you it’s a little scary. There’s a wheeze of cracked coals behind his voice, and he slides his own touch back in again to soften the intensity you let him feel. God, you’re even quiet like he is, passionately silent since your fingers slid inside him.

“Sorry,” you husk out, throat dry with heat and tight with emotion. “I-”

It’s _fine_. He’s not complaining; he likes it. And that’s not the only way you’re alike, either. There’s something about you he can relate to, something almost no one gets. He flickers all over, opening for you again. He is what he does, and he does what he is. The shape of habit, the deep, balancing calm of conscientious attention to detail. He lets you know the satisfaction of polishing and maintaining, organizing and brewing, creating and nurturing every day. People he needs and ones who need him coming and going: sometimes the same, sometimes different, always welcome.

Curation of community, becoming what connects people. And you, The Reader, treading the lines of your own life in the direction you choose. Discerning, incisive, dense with reality steady enough for feckless monsters like Sans and Grillby to hang on to like a storm anchor, to give of themselves however much they can, in whatever ways you will allow.

His magic sheds as soft showers of sparks, but every now and then a few tears fall, ambient substance superheated to the point of becoming plasma. He gathers them up carefully to be reabsorbed, since they’re hot enough he’d rather not risk them being in the bed with you. Stars….with _you_.

He’s wanted this so much. For a long time now, probably.

But Grillby’s not used to getting what he wants. Tries not to even think about it, most of the time.

You know how it is.

Grillby hasn’t shared souls with many monsters, but he’s been alive a long, long time. He’s older than Sans by a fair margin by your standards; they’re both so old the difference is irrelevant. Most monsters underground have shared souls with everyone who isn’t proscribed under their complex taboos, which is part of why they exist. Grillby’s not really like that, though. In fact, you’re the first new person he’s shared his soul with since...Sans, actually. Now that he thinks about it.

Grillby feels your surprise, looks down at the bed for a brief moment of reflection… that turns to white-hot, shivery transgression. He returns his breathless, fiery regard to you.

He and Craig do _other things_. He grins right through his obscenely thrilled panting, the emotions and sensations fueling it are positively _wicked_. You gape at him, and an unexpectedly…._filthy_ brand of amusement adds itself to the gentle seething around your fingers, along with an intoxicating tinge of...bashfulness?

“Holy shit,” you whisper, shivering as Grillby’s intensity draws cool air around you from behind again, gathering up your whisper and bringing it into his body. He moans, lightening with arousal as his heated exhalation pushes against you in turn. You realize there’s been a great deal of shifting around; you’re on your belly sideways on the bed now, arm out in front touching him and your chin resting on your bicep awkwardly.

And your hand creeping its nonchalant way between your legs, which is why Grillby’s sighing and moaning (and grinning) like that. He’s very, very interested in you touching yourself. But the flustered response he feels from you softens that grin considerably. Grillby likes being playful, but...yeah, he’s maybe a little defensive, because...he’s...

Grillby looks down, touches himself to help navigate the layers of protectiveness he wraps himself in so tight, the fetters he binds himself with, the walls around his tenderness so thick and tall he ends up strangled on his own loneliness. Especially when he doesn’t even need to be. His focus turns inward, but this time he invites you to follow him to the door, left just barely ajar if you’d like to listen.

He desperately craves understanding; he’s terrified to be seen stripped down.

Much as Sans had thought Grillby would ‘punish’ him…Grillby had both feared and hoped that Sans would be able to read what he wanted, and give it to him without asking. But he won’t, just as Grillby won’t hurt him. And that’s because Grillby…struggles with the same thing. Punishment. Even though he knows punishing himself won’t help, it won’t change anything except make life a little crueler…he _wants_, and then he denies himself. He feels like he doesn’t deserve it.

It’s connected to what he’d wanted...when you, he and Sans had first gotten close, he had wanted to feel Sans’s pleasure. His body, his urgency, and its culmination.

What he’d wanted was to feel Sans come. Has for a long time, maybe since Sans first shared himself that way. He wants it so hard he feels like he might just crumble to dust with it, and that’s why he can’t...can’t ask. Can’t make himself express it, not even with all of the ways Sans makes available. Sans won’t just _do_ things, won’t share unless he asks. Unless he communicates his desire, until Sans can trust him with himself, with them both. It’s perfectly reasonable, and Sans is right, and even if he wasn’t Sans is allowed to set his own boundaries… Grillby knows that… and yet.

And yet. The wanting twists cruelly inside him, taunting and stinging and _punishing_, and he, he can’t...he…

You moan in surprise together; suddenly his heat and yours _align._ The heat of your urgency, the yawning conflagration of his hollow hunger, and you both get more than a little caught up in it.

You each touch your own bodies in ways you usually only do alone, suddenly, shockingly shameless.

A human and a ball of fire, holding hands inside an inverted silverwhite heart floating a few inches off a fireproof bed. Then there’s a little pull, and you follow Grillby’s prompting until he slides right off the bed. You lay on your front, one arm extended out to keep Grillby’s soul close enough to his body that he doesn’t pass through your touch, other hand working ceaselessly between your legs. Grillby pants and moans up at you, gripping the coverlet for dear life until it starts to slide. Grillby’s body roils and roars, flames stoking themselves mercilessly hotter as he pulls in oxygen, shakes and sheds out motes and coils of flame, a gentle rain of cataclysmic destruction on the fireproof floor.

An ocean of fire, an eruption of desire. Inevitable. _Beautiful_.

But just as you start to tip over that searing peak, Grillby’s soul dissipates from around your fingers, and he… he just fucking _melts_ abruptly onto the floor with an impressively wet-sounding plop. Regardless, you expertly wring out your climax just fine solo, listening to Grillby cuss and whump, reflected watery-seeming light seething across the ceiling.

_...Fuck!….shit, I’m….oh, ohh stars…_

“What’s wrong?” you pant, weakly wriggling toward the edge of the bed. You stop well short, since the floor is currently and literally lava, searing heat wavering like a wall around the bed, all the way to the ceiling where crazed orange light dances. “Are you--”

…_.I’m fine! ….I’m, it’s...h-holy shit, that was **intense**… ohhh, fuck me sideways…_

You wipe your hand off on your leg, then wipe your leg off on the bed. The light on the ceiling roils around wildly for a minute or so, then begins to calm and settle on everything with a more mellow sort of glow.

…_.I seem…….to have eaten your clothes on accident._ Grillby’s thick little crackle is both replete and remorseful, and you can’t help it. You start laughing.

“It’s okay,” you snort. “My fault for leaving them where they fell. We put a few changes in your phone for me, remember?” He’s quiet. Awww. You hope he’s not too embarrassed. “That’s _why_ we put them there.” You blink. “You didn’t eat your phone too, did you?

_...__No, of course not_, Grillby says, a ghost of his usual prim tone coming back in. _...It’s fireproof._

“Do you need me to help you--” go back to how you were, you mean to say, but change it to, “--with anything?”

Grillby’s quiet for a minute or two, except for his wheezy panting. You’re pretty sure he’s eating something else now, too. You can’t tell what it is, but it seems to be helping. He’s starting to come back together, but is also trying to creep under the bed, expression a bit...sheepish.

_...I chickened out_, he admits quietly. _…__just the start was too much for me. I’m lucky I didn’t __get the bright idea to __push._

“You changed your mind,” you correct gently, making a mental note to tell Sans the ‘bright idea’ thing later. “It’s always okay to change your mind.”

…_.Yeah_, he whispers after a long pause, and you frown until you realize what’s making you frown. Grillby has a lot of different speech modes, including but not limited to the spectacularly foul mouth prized by those who actually manage to win their way into his bed. But you don’t think you’ve ever actually heard him say _yeah_ before. He’s always been a “yes” monster, although not as much a never-uses-contractions monster like Toriel.

You ponder that for the few minutes it takes for Grillby to finish getting his shit together, and turn to him with a smile as he rejoins you in the bed.

“You’re _really_ strong,” you say, then wince belatedly at the awkwardness of it.

……

“Sorry, I mean, um. I barely felt aware of myself at all? This felt like it was kinda all you.”

_...Ah_. Grillby’s all purple at the edges, staring down through his own body at the coverlet.

“Sorry?”

…_..Don’t be_. He’s blushing at the bed, and you see that soft, faint blue glow happening around his upper-middle. You consider teasing him a bit since you know what that means now, then decide he looks shy enough. Nice to know it was a compliment, just maybe a bit more direct than he was expecting.

_...I certainly was…._ He wheezes faintly, darts a look at you. The blue increases. _….Aware. Of you._ He looks back down at/through himself. Ahh. He knows he’s pretty, but he’s extremely particular about the circumstances under which he shares that, and with whom. This is when he indulges that part of himself. _...Did you like what you saw?_ He adds, surprising you with his sparks of boldness, as always.

“Humans can’t see souls the way monsters do,” you remind him. He nods, but not like he’d forgotten. Like he’s getting at something.

_...__Aaron told me that Tony is able to See something of him if his…_ Grillby looks like he’s searching for words. _…his… __(__involuntary-intent-spoken-self__)__ goes inside Tony’s eyes_, he explains laboriously.

“I just call it shed magic,” you reply, scratching the underside of your neck. Sexytimes with Grillby is a very sweaty endeavor, and drying sweat makes you itchy. “Wouldn’t yours just, um. Burn my eyes out?”

…_Hmm. Not…necessarily._ He’s grinning, still bold. It’s cute. Or ‘Cute’, as Sans puts it when he’s using his hands to talk about Grillby, which is, in turn, cute. _…Do you like it with Sans?_

You blink. “I’ve never done that with Sans.”

Grillby looks very surprised. _…You __don’t want to?_

“Hmmm,” you sigh, “No, I’m not opposed to it.”

…_Oh. Did he say something…?_

“No,” you say again. “Nothing like that, I just…know he doesn’t want me to?” It’s weird you haven’t thought about it, maybe. But you just...know it’s true, and it’s fine. You don’t say anything about magic and eyes and seeing souls, since that person wouldn’t want you to. And because you’re talking about sex things, and that wasn’t sex things because you both decided it wasn’t.

…_.__O__h. __Hmm…_ Grillby crackles up at the ceiling thoughtfully. You watch his body with that sense you use to read his expressions; he’s sort of hugging-rubbing himself all over. Cuddling in the afterglow. It gives you that tight feeling in your chest again, the one that made you want to ask him back here in the first place. It’s a good feeling.

…_It’s possible he’s not ready. O__r__ perhaps he is afrai__d__ you will be able to see __inside__._

Well. That’s a weird thing to say.

“See inside what?” you ask, and Grillby roils over onto his side to face you.

_...You...well, I suppose you __**haven’t**__ seen it._ He crackles a short laugh; at himself, not you. _…Since we were literally just speaking of it._ Grillby looks inward, expression both vague and fond. _…I meant the place __in Sans’s soul__ where there isn’t anything. _

You gape at him.

“I thought that was like…a metaphor?”

…_No?_ Grillby shimmies, still cuddling himself with evident, charming enjoyment. _…__Of course, I can’t actually see it either. I just...know it’s not there and why?_

“That sure sounds like a weird monster thing to say,” you admit with a soft smile. You decide to wrap your arms around your torso and cuddle yourself a little bit too. Grillby does the little dart-pointing piece of fire thing he does when he’s especially pleased by your you-ness. “I got the impression that you knew because you’re familiar with that sort of thing?”

Grillby makes the universal monster deciding-whether-or-not-to-say-something face, and you wait for the verdict. It doesn’t take long.

_...__Lola’s soul was shattered in the war.” _You blink in surprise._ ….__What I provide makes it possible for her to keep the pieces together, but her intent is the crucial element. That is as much as I may speak of it–_ you nod and sign understanding of the taboo between them, _–but nevertheless, I am surprised she was able to share it with Sans. __Despite this, I am not surprised that she did, since it is likely she knew his soul was also wounded, __and…oh…are you uncomfortable?_

You blush, noticing you’re making the ‘yeesh’ face as well as feeling the yeesh emotion.

“Apparently,” you say, then clear your throat.

_...Just change the subject.._ . Grillby says amiably. _ ...I’m not bothered when you do that._ He obviously thinks it’s cute when you do that, so you indulge him. Everybody wins.

“You’re really proud of Fuku, huh?” Grillby loves being prompted to talk about his daughter, although sometimes you wonder why he doesn’t talk about Heats Flamesman as often. Seems like no one does; he’s just here sometimes, and other times he’s not. He just kind of...is.

…_I’m proud of both of them_, Grillby says dryly, making you blush at his incisiveness. He obviously spends too much time imitating Sans in the looking-at-your-face department. _….Just because Fuku takes after me, and Heats Flamesman does not…_ Grillby laughs. _….Heats and Sans go on vacations together sometimes. Did he tell you about it?_

“Umm, no!” you quack in surprised amusement. “Where do they go?”

…_.Sans takes a shortcut to places that require swailing sometimes,_ Grillby informs you like it’s not crazytown bananapants. _…and other times they merely go to safe places on the surface for Heats Flamesman to exist, and do whatever it is that they do. I understand that many human cultures require for individuals to be useful __in specific ways__ in order to be respecte__d__, but...monsters are not like that._

“I know, Grillby.” Now you’re more uncomfortable than before, but it doesn’t seem like he’s letting you off the hook on this one yet.

_...You know, but you do not always…._ Grillby flickers an apologetic look at you, then sighs. _…I don’t mean to criticize. I am aware your own __complexities__ inform your emotions._

Your face scrunches up all at once. “What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

…_Merely that you project your own feelings of reduced value you have towards yourself onto my child_, Grillby says.

You stare at the coverlet, stung.

_...__I...am sorry_. You look back up; Grillby’s crestfallen. _...I should__n’t__…_

“No, Grillby. It’s my issue.” You sigh thunderously, then snort. “Papyrus already let me know I need to work on that.”

He softens, nods. _…Well, I don’t imagine I could say it worse than he would have._ Grillby sighs, little sparks swimming an inch or two above his body. _…It is easy for you to see that Fuku is like me. But __much __like Heats…__**I**__ was restless for a long, long time, __and may have remained so indefinitely__. That is __what__ I showed you. This is not how I have __**always**__ been, __and both of my children are very much like me._ He does that self-deprecating eyeroll impression again.

“It’s not bad to be like you,” you say softly. “I like you.” You’re about to continue when you notice the very mild annoyance at the edges of Grillby’s expression, so you pause instead. You hope you’re not about to have a couple argument or something. Or maybe you kind of do? Bickering with Grillby’s always been a good challenge for both of you, and hashing out something a little deeper between you might not be a bad thing.

_...Not to be rude, but. Are you going to get that?_

You look around in confusion, then frown. “Huh?”

…_.Oh. Yes._ Grillby changes through a few different colors quickly. …_Your phone is going off. I… forget, sometimes._ Grillby’s purple with chagrin, and you snicker as you go searching. You can understand him fine because of the monster-soul-speaking thing, but the ambient music always playing in the bar (and subsequently in his room) makes you more or less functionally deaf to noises that aren’t abrupt enough to cut through. Luckily it’s safe in the bed, shoved under a sheet tangled around a pillow. The content of the message definitely distracts you from wherever where the (counterintuitively enjoyable???) tension with Grillby is taking you.

“Hey, so. It’s Sans.” You clear your throat. “He’s asking for help emerging from the Cloister. But, um. I’m not trying to skip out on you or anything, though.”

Grillby just laughs, doesn’t seem bothered by a damn thing.

…_Y__ou __**do**__ realize I was supposed to be out __**there**__ this entire time?_ You had not. Ohhh hoo hoo. …_Fuku’s going to…well._ He giggles, averts his eyeless gaze. _….That’s for me to worry about._

“Oh my _god_, Grillby!” You slap your hand on your face, then frown and give it a sniff. Ugh. You put your hand down and finish scowling at Grillby. “Did you seriously just full-on ditch your eternal, cosmic community service to go have a monster quickie with me?”

Grillby just wheeze-chuckles madly and doesn’t say anything, flickering all over with barely-suppressed glee. You sigh dramatically, letting him milk his harmless transgression for full value. Holy shit, he reminds you of Sans sometimes. No wonder you get along, despite the obstacles that really should have prevented it. You find yourself holding your arms out straight to him, face all scrunched like a little kid waiting for a shirt to be put on.

“Will you make me not smelly anymore?” Because yeah, there’s always that little bit of that singed-hair scent you don’t notice until afterwards. Luckily it always ends up being your toe hair or something else you don’t mind parting with. And not like. Eyebrows.

The shocked quack you make every time you get one of Grillby’s “hugs” echoes off the mostly-bare walls of his room, made tinny by the stills that take up more than half of it. But you can’t help it. The feeling of having your eyeballs incorporeally heat-dried before becoming suddenly wet again never gets less baffling, nor does the rush of having fire exist throughout every single particle of your being to eliminate everything not-you (minus a few key seed bacteria) grow less exhilarating. And he can linger a bit more when you’re not wearing clothes, since it takes less concentration for him.

Instead of rushing to get back out there like you expected, Grillby just roils around on his bed some more, watching you get dressed in the clothes he whoosh-blorted out of his phone for you. You’re feeling awfully limber from the hot sex and hotter hugs, so you make it into a little reverse-burlesque dance show.

You tell Grillby you’re a sexy potato, and he makes you blush by telling you that you’re more like a pear thing Sans told him about. You take a moment to privately remind yourself to see if Sans can get some more of those, for Grillby this time. All too soon you’re dressed again, and giving your goodbyes even though you’re still a little flustered thinking about the pears and potatoes and fire and your own buttshape and what have you. You linger over a few more dulcet farewells with the sapient bed bonfire, blushing about how much your monster lovers like your body, which isn’t something you’re exactly, um. Used to. Then…

You pause with your hand on the door, turn back abruptly as something occurs to you.

“…Wait. Would you be able to fireproof a dildo?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, so. If you read A Certain Tenderness and are chafing a bit at the pacing here...  
ACT (can’t believe no one ever called out my corny acronym) was more like playing dominoes, tile by tile. Each tile contingent on the others, connecting to each other, all by the numbers in its own way.   
These dominoes are being set up on end.  
Brace for capslock incoming next chapter <3


	9. gotta have hobbies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tori Amos – The Waitress  
https://youtu.be/UbeN7eRtdLU
> 
> I didn’t say anything about the first Sans chapter, but um. If you read Convenient Fictions… you might be slightly more prepared for this? No promises though.
> 
> Welcome to CAPSCHAPTER, a.k.a. tol yelleton do a screm

Papyrus dutifully checks his mirrors, then turns his skull quickly to check his blind spot before changing lanes.

Thus braced by adherence to routine, he glances over at a pointy-toothed distillation of worst case scenarios poured into a pair of shiny black pants. Edge is currently clutching his own leather-clad, knobby knees with equally be-leatheréd hands like they’re going to fly right out of the top of the perky red convertible if he doesn’t keep them under control.

Papyrus wonders if _he_ looked this unnerved the first time he ever rode in a car.

With a gusty sigh, Papyrus pretends to shift gears with the lever Sans installed that’s just for pretending to shift gears, and admits to himself that he likely _had_ looked as concerned about foiling The Great Knee Escape as Edge does. Probably more so, but it doesn’t count since the only ones who saw were Sans and Toriel. They won’t tell anyone, much less show them the video. Papyrus hasn’t seen it either, but the delighted and extremely cool screaming he hears from his brother’s phone every once in a while under the softly huffed giggles that accompany them would suggest it’s very educational.

“THANK YOU,” Edge grates with narrowed sockets. Looks like he regrets rejecting Papyrus’s offer of sunglasses and fashionable unicorn printed tape to keep them in place. Maybe he’s thanking him merely for the offer? Belatedly?

Papyrus socket-blinks rapidly, leans over to open and close the glove compartment a few times. “I KNOW.” He doesn’t know.

Edge unsuccessfully tries to sigh. “FOR THE...BRUSHES. THEY WERE...” Papyrus can hear Edge’s teeth grinding. “...USEFUL. AND REMARKABLY TIME CONSUMING. I HOPE YOU HAVE ENOUGH LEFT FOR YOURSELF?”

Papyrus ignores the veiled insult, because he is the most gracious of all possible hosts. Motor vehicles included. After all, this is Papyrus’s car, and Edge is Papyrus’s guest in it.

“THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONCERN, WHICH HAS BEEN DULY NOTED! BUT I HAVE ENOUGH TO LAST UNTIL THE NEXT CENTURY. DON’T WORRY, _THAT’S_ ONLY ABOUT TWENTY MORE LINEAR YEARS AWAY,” Papyrus informs him archly. “I WOULDN’T WANT YOU TO GET THE IMPRESSION THAT I’M EXAGGERATING!”

Papyrus had in fact bought out a failing factory that made disposable toothbrushes and a few other cheap plastic goods, then requisitioned an entire cavern in hotland and left them there until they had turned entirely to magic. He is fully committed to using them for the “hygienic purposes” their labeling promises until they’re gone. Now instead of being poisonous litter, once they are “disposed of” as the labeling also promises, they can become snacks for crabs and voles and rhinoceroses and such. Much better than the landfill they’d been previously destined for… and those humans wouldn’t even give them to other humans who could have _used_ them! They had been so determined to throw them away unused, as if giving people something they needed without paying was worse...worse than..

Papyrus catches himself scowling and stops immediately. One sour puss is already too many for the BONEMOBILE. Which is, naturally, what the plate on the back reads. Spelled out in miniature lemon-poppyseed muffins. Which are glued to the plate of course, so they don’t fly off once they reach highway speeds. Safety first.

“IT’S MUTUAL,” Edge caws at the air blowing directly into his skull at about 45 miles per hour.

“IF YOU PREFER,” Papyrus agrees, enjoying the protection of his sunglasses. He _did_ offer. “WHAT IS, EXACTLY?”

Edge scoffs out a laugh. “YOU DON’T LIKE ME.”

Papyrus scoffs much more scoffily, then tosses his scarf around so it billows behind him instead of covering his face.

“AHH, YES. THE INTERPERSONAL TENSION. I--”

“HOW CAN IT BE _INTER_PERSONAL TENSION WHEN WE’RE THE SAME _PERSON_?”

Papyrus is fairly used to being interrupted, but for some reason it’s more annoying when Edge does it. Instead of answering, Papyrus leans forward abruptly enough to make Edge tense up, and pushes the button on the dashboard that makes the music play.

_Hey, where’s your work?_  
_What’s your game?_  
_I know your business but I don’t know your name_

“BUT...” Edge makes a face at Papyrus like his pants are suddenly far too tight. A little late on that boat. “THERE’S _ALREADY_ A SONG!” he objects, mortally offended.

Papyrus grins brightly, pretending to shift gears again as they exit the ‘freeway’ and decelerating until they coast to a stop at a conveniently positioned traffic light. “I’M SO HAPPY YOU NOTICED!! WELL! YOU SEE, THERE’S THIS SWEET NOTHING CALLED DIEGESIS THAT MY EXTREMELY FAMOUS AND GOOD LOOKING EX HUSBAND METTATON--” Papyrus ignores Edge’s choked noise, “--USED TO EXPLAIN DIRECTLY INTO MY ACOUSTIC MEATUS EVERY ONCE UPON A SWEATY, MOONLIT NIGHT.”

They’re still at the stoplight, so Papyrus turns to aim his gleaming (reflective) grin at Edge like the weapon it is. “YOU SEE, _THAT_ SONG REFLECTS OUR EXPERIENCE ONLY _THEMATICALLY_, LIKE THE MUSIC PLAYING DURING A MONTAGE, OR WHEN THE CREDITS ROLL IN A MOVIE. WE CAN’T ACTUALLY HEAR IT!!” Edge looks nonplussed. Perfect. “IN CONTRAST, _THIS_ SONG---”

_Hold on tight, you know she's a little bit dangerous_  
_She's got what it takes to make ends meet_  
_The eyes of a lover that hit like heat…_

“--IS THE ONE I’M PLAYING FOR YOU IN MY CAR RIGHT NOW!!”

Edge stares at him helplessly.

Papyrus continues to grin.

“ARE YOU ENJOYING THE SONG I’M PLAYING FOR YOU IN MY CAR RIGHT NOW?”

_Get out of my way, get out of my sight_  
_I won’t be walking on thin ice to get through the night_

“IT’S A BIT CONFUSING TO HAVE BOTH OF THEM HAPPENING AT ONCE,” Edge grates.

Politely.

Good, since Papyrus is ready to throw down pretty much whenever. There are a lot of things Papyrus just _doesn’t do_, but kicking some booty is certainly not one of them. He still leans in and clicks the song back off, and the light obligingly turns green once he straightens. Because Papyrus is the _most_ polite. Certainly politer than Sawtooth McStrappyboots over there. Skeleton throat-clearing noises and another sour puss wiped determinedly off his own skull aside.

(And if Edge’s existence is a constantly irritating reminder of all the things Papyrus would obviously _would_ have done under other specific circumstances gives him a bit of a hankering for bootykicking...well. Perhaps Papyrus should seek healthy outlets for expending that energy. He makes a mental note to send an inquiry to his Sexy Ex-y (Nyeh heh heh) regarding other potential applications for booty.)

The song thing reminds Papyrus of the argument he’d had with Sans once, about whether or not Papyrus can “really drive” since no matter what Papyrus actually does the car still goes where he wants it to go. Papyrus had been firmly on the side of “can drive”, and he’d actually won that logic puzzle handily. Sans’s expression had warmed him deeply, that simmer of admiration that lingers long after his enthusiastic agreement with or convoluted evasion of whatever Papyrus just said.

Just because the motions he makes might not be the same as another monster might (which include gleefully sawing the steering wheel back and forth like it makes the car go) doesn’t change the fact that what Papyrus is doing meets every last bit of the criteria for the dictionary’s definition of driving. Papyrus is certainly exerting communicating force, having great force, exerting pressure, and acting with vigor; ENERGETIC.

Papyrus parks the car. That doesn’t mean he’s going to stop driving, as Edge will soon discover. Life on the surface is so full of wonder and surprises!

“IT’S JUST AS WELL!” he hollers conversationally, “SINCE WE’RE HERE!!” Papyrus jumps over the door, backflips over the hood, walks calmly around the back to do a slow cartwheel over the plate of muffins glued to the top of the trunk, then opens the door for Edge.

Politely.

Edge gets out and looks around, flinching at some humans walking down the sidewalk a block and a half away.

“WHAT IS THIS?”

Papyrus takes a deep breath and strikes a pose, the better to show off his tie-dyed shorts overalls with matching gloves and boots. Batiked bone shapes are embedded at random in the tie-dye, and his scarf, skullkerchief, and belt are the same electric blue as the blue part of the tie-dye.

His oversized belt buckle is a usable miniature paint palette. It is socket-meltingly sexy.

“IT’S TAKE-YOURSELF-TO-WORK DAY AT THE FLOWER SHOP!” Papyrus gestures like a game show host at the giant and completely glittered sign that reads PAPYRUS if you squint hard enough. Edge doesn’t, but that’s okay. Red and hot pink can be a little difficult to distinguish from one another if you’re not an experienced sign-reader. “YOU’RE WELCOME!”

Edge gapes at him. “YOU’VE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME.”

“OF COURSE NOT, THAT COSTS EXTRA!” Papyrus crows in apparent delight, tilting his skull and clapping his hands together under his chin. The delight is _only_ apparent for the moment, but Papyrus will always be a ride or die proponent of ‘fake it until you make it’. “NOW BRACE YOURSELF FOR THE GRAND TOUR!”

Papyrus opens the door and makes a broad, sweeping gesture indicating the interior. Edge follows him in, his smoldering wine-red eyes combing the interior for assassins. Papyrus closes the door and gestures again.

“THIS IS A FLOWER SHOP! I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE TOUR.” And Papyrus walks over to the storage fridge and starts pulling out boxes from the last shipment.

Edge gives him that _look_ again.

“IT WAS...QUITE GRAND.”

“YOU’RE WELCOME! NOW HOW ABOUT YOU HELP ME SET UP SO I CAN SHOW YOU HOW IT WORKS, HMMM?”

Those carmine points flicker in brief disbelief. “YOU. EXPECT ME TO DO YOUR JOB FOR YOU.”

Papyrus laughs gaily. “OF COURSE NOT. _BEGINNERS_ UNLOAD CRATES AND FILL THE SUPPLY BINS!!”

He watches Edge struggle with the fact that Papyrus fully expects him to do exactly what he just said, along with just how difficult it had been to extricate him from his brother. He’d struggled desperately despite his brother’s assurances-that-sounded-nothing-like-assurances-and-more-like-insults, and the lure of a bit of “friendly competition” that Edge had been unable to back down from. Not when it’s Papyrus issuing challenges. And Edge is certainly aware that Papyrus is carefully maintaining him in a state of off-balance without letting him boil over into explosive violence or a literal panic attack (the latter two of which for Edge are probably more or less the same thing).

Papyrus has presented Edge with the first of many choices. Edge could continue to struggle with the meaning of life and the implications of his own actions. Or he could just shut up, pick up a box, and open it. Papyrus knocks the edges off his own grin, because he already knows he’s won this round. Being a sore winner isn’t his style.

This role fits Papyrus like a perfectly broken-in glove. The person he’s handling _knows_ they’re being handled, and somehow they just...let it happen. He wonders if Edge had figured out yet he didn’t have a chance, since the only role Papyrus is even more suited to than implacably guiding others into pushing their comfort zones and mindfully engaging in new situations... is doing the exact same thing for himself. If Papyrus _couldn't_ handle himself, talk himself through things, narrow things down to distinct choices and _make_ them….well. Papyrus would probably be living in ceaseless mortal terror from the comfort of his own closet, buried under perfectly folded blankets and sweating profusely from the effort of avoiding phone calls.

Edge grates and balks and bitches, but he does what he’s told. Every look is that Look. The one that chides Papyrus for using a perfectly balanced, razor sharp stiletto to open jars.

Papyrus suppresses a sigh, and just continues to instruct him on finding and unloading the correct cases into the proper supply bins.

Edge has been certain he’d be put to some sort of martial use, guard duty or monster strategies for overcoming and subjugating the human population or whatever he’d manage to convince himself was going on in the world outside Grillby’s.

There’s really nothing to subjugate, once the handful of dedicated full-time subjugators had been dealt with when monsters arrived at the surface...and Frisk let them know exactly where they needed to be and when. Humans are a fucking mess, and it’s being handled. The ones who manage to get over themselves long enough to actually ask for help unfailingly receive it, as long as the request is genuine. And after their potential motives are vetted thoroughly by the monsters assigned to vet it. Otherwise everyone minds their own business, even when it sucks.

Papyrus watches Edge gripe and groan under a yoke that doesn’t exist. He wonders when Edge is going to stop thinking of himself as an object. Probably not for a while, based on the look of it. He can tell it has not occurred to Edge in the slightest that he could walk right out this door anytime, keep going until he hits the ocean and hang out with Jerry for the rest of his natural existence. (Jerry spends the vast majority of his time with dolphins these days, much to the relief of all decent monsters, humans, and most non-asshole sentient creatures of Earth. Dolphins are actually _very_ interested in the possibility of humans gaining the ability to understand their speech again what with the reintegration, but. To delay this inevitability, monsters gave them Jerry as a “liaison” since everything dolphins have to say is more or less nonstop sexual propositions and demanding more infants to eat, and Jerry can’t hear anything over the sound of his own crunchy cheeto-eating blather. It’s working out great for everyone.)

Okay, so. Maybe Papyrus is being a little dramatic. He clears his throat, starts showing Edge how to trim the flowers before they go into the bins from which they can then be transferred directly into arrangements. He still shoots Papyrus plenty of dirty looks, objecting to the use he’s being put to. Insisting that he _be_ put to use.

Papyrus smiles and hands him a pair of razor-sharp pinking shears without a moment’s hesitation.

People are not disposable toothbrushes. They don’t need to be put to _use_. Edge, however, desperately needs to be _busy_….and Papyrus can relate, considering Edge is also Papyrus. Papyrus very carefully does not think about the various reasons people are hauled into existence whether they will or no, and the many purposes to which they can be assigned.

Papyrus tastes bitterness, feels Flowey’s absence like a wound.

And Edge brings it up again, because of course he does.

“I DON’T SEE HOW THIS MAKES USE OF MY TALENTS,” he grits out, trimming the stems and excess leaves with edgy precision.

“HOW WILL YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR TALENTS _ARE_ IF YOU DON’T _EXPLORE_ THEM?” Papyrus rebuts brightly.

Edge tosses the next bundle back into the bin without looking. They fall perfectly into place as he wheels to face Papyrus and get snippy with him.

“ARE YOU MENTALLY _DAMAGED_? IS YOUR MIN--”

“YES!” Papyrus laughs incredulously. Apparently Edge has gone to great lengths to forget just about everything from their first encounter. Edge knows Papyrus damaged his mind (and his brother’s, which he doesn’t like thinking about) on purpose so he could forget things he can’t bear to remember. He also has a tendency to forget a bunch of other things as well now, but that’s just one of the things Integrity’s for. Papyrus tilts his skull at Edge, expression just shy of belligerence. “WHAT’S _YOUR_ EXCUSE?”

Papyrus watches chagrin chase bafflement across the artfully battered duplicate of his own features, then starts making flower arrangements. Edge has the decency to shut up for a good thirty seconds, so Papyrus has mercy. Eventually.

“YOU NEED SOMETHING TO DO,” he says as gently as he can. It isn’t very, but he’s really doing his best here. “WE ARE DOING SOMETHING. IF YOU REALLY DON’T LIKE IT, WE WILL TRY SOMETHING ELSE.”

Edge stares at him, his leather-gloved hands full of scissors and plants. “YOU...THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE FOR _MY_ BENEFIT?”

Papyrus’s fingers fly, already working on his second arrangement. The first is already set on the table with the big rolls of colored cellophane at the side. It’s simple and very neat; more an icebreaker than anything.

“IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE FUN. IT’S SOMETHING TO _DO_. SORRY IT’S NOT MURDERING PEOPLE,” Papyrus blurts. Then clicks his teeth shut, takes another deep, calming breath. “I JUST MEANT...IT’S A CHANGE OF PACE.”

Edge croaks a humorless laugh. Papyrus doesn’t look at him.“YES, WELL, EVERYTHING IS JUST _FINE_ NOW, ISN’T IT? I DON’T SEE WHY-”

“THAT’S EXACTLY WHEN THEY’LL BE WAITING FOR YOU,” Papyrus interrupts pleasantly.

Edge puts down the long-stemmed red roses. He still holds the scissors.

“YOU ALREADY FEEL IT,” Papyrus says bluntly before Edge can say anything else. Just before he was about to talk, in fact; Papyrus’s timing has always been very good. “IN THE QUIET MOMENTS, WHEN EVERYTHING’S _ESPECIALLY_ JUST FINE.” He glances over subtly. Edge’s blank expression as he stares at Papyrus’s rapidly moving hands is promising. “WHEN YOU _KNOW_ YOUR BROTHER IS SAFE, AND THE DOOR IS LOCKED, AND THE PUZZLES ARE CALIBRATED, AND EVERYTHING’S AS _TIDY AS IT CAN BE_, AND YOU STILL. CAN’T. STOP.”

Papyrus reaches across in front of Edge to take the roses he’d put down, pushes them into the florist’s block one by one. He keeps going, and also keeps talking.

“IT IS PART OF WHO WE ARE. IT IS _INNATE_. THAT IS WHY YOU FEEL THAT WAY. YOU KNOW IT’S COMING, AND YOU’LL HAVE TO STOP PUTTING IT OFF AT _SOME_ POINT AND YOU _DON’T WANT TO_, YOU, YOU JUST AREN’T READY FOR…” His own breath shudders out rawly; Papyrus tastes the tinge of bitterness before he swallows it. There he goes, forgetting what he’s saying in the middle of saying it again. Something about Edge always makes that seem to happen more around him. “IT DOESN’T GO _AWAY_,” he caws as gently as he can manage. Papyrus looks over again, his arrangement already complete.

Edge stares at red roses and near-black Japanese maple leaves, jaw set stubbornly. He obviously needs a little reminder.

“EVEN WHEN EVERYTHING ELSE IS GONE, THE FEAR _REMAINS_,” Papyrus insists.

Edge’s hand reflexively, automatically crushes the scissors like they’re made of paper. He flinches back from his own violence.

“EXACTLY.”

Edge finally looks up at Papyrus. His scarred, malevolent face is still blank.

Papyrus isn’t his brother’s match with reading expressions, not even close. But he knows himself in this sense, more than he really wants to most of the time. Edge _truly_ thought the way he felt was a product of the environment, which is understandable. Constant, soul-crushing fear when everyone is trying to kill you, when you’re trying to kill them before they can do something even worse, and so you do something even worse than that, and when you’d already done….well.

_U__nthinkable_ things, so Papyrus _doesn’t_ think them.

The whole everyone-trying-to-kill-you thing makes that kind of fear feel justified, even when your actions aren’t. He shouldn’t be surprised that Edge forgot one of the many, many unfortunate things they’d learned in their encounter so easily: that Papyrus is every bit as afraid as Edge is.

Edge knows how to deal with constant, soul-crushing terror when he and Red are in an equivalent amount of danger, with no chance of escaping it.

Edge has _absolutely no idea_ how to deal with constant, soul-crushing terror while arranging flowers. So Papyrus has taken it upon himself to show him, or at least demonstrate that it is possible. Papyrus moves the arrangement to the other table without leaning. His arm is very, very long.

Edge’s eyes flare blood-dark in darker sockets. “WHY?”

Papyrus scoffs. He tastes bitterness so strong he keeps his teeth closed to hold it in.

“There is no _why_ (reason to exist). Not for us (PAPYRUS).” He meets Edge’s gaze squarely. “No **purpose ****[REDACTED]** to continue. Not if _you_ want to continue (existential: threat? [threat: error?]).”

Papyrus isn’t Sans, but he has to hold in a fair amount of surprise when he sees very clearly that Edge _doesn’t understand_ him. He looks oddly...vacant instead of just blank, and his eyes wink out for a long beat before flickering back together.

“WHAT ARE YOU SAYING LIKE THAT? I CAN’T...WHAT _IS_ THAT? IS THAT A _THREAT_?”

Papyrus grins like Edge just won a prize. He did, in a way. “THAT IS ENTIRELY UP TO YOU! AREN’T YOU RELIEVED TO HAVE SO MANY _CHOICES_?”

“SUCH AS?”

“WHAT DID YOU _HOPE_ FOR ALL THAT TIME WHILE YOU WERE DOING ALL THAT MURDERING AND...THINGS?” Papyrus flaps a gloved hand impatiently. “DO _THAT_ INSTEAD.”

Edge quivers.

“I DON’T…KNOW HOW.”

“THEN _LEARN_, FOR FUCKS SAKES!” Papyrus says, losing his temper for just a sec. One squidgey little second before he gets it back under control. It’s fine; he’s fine.

This is fine.

“LEARN TO COOK SOMETHING SO DISGUSTING YOUR BROTHER WILL STOP HOARDING GREASY BURGERS UNDER HIS PILLOW,” Papyrus caws in exasperation. “DESIGN PANTS SOMEHOW EVEN TIGHTER THAN WHAT YOU HAVE ON. MAKE ““FRIENDS””. WATCH _FRIENDS_. POSE FOR ONE OF THOSE CLASSES WHERE THEY DRAW NAKED HUMANS!”

“WHY THE HELL WOULD I-”

“LEARN HOW TO STOP PARROTING SELF-DEFEATING CATCHPHRASES AND ACTUALIZE YOUR PERSONAL POTENTIAL,” Papyrus interrupts, drowning him out. “LEARN HOW TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB! DO _CLAY_??? IT MATTERS MUCH LESS _WHAT_ YOU DO THAN _THAT YOU DO IT_. AS LONG AS IT...DOESN’T HURT ANYONE. THE WHOLE _POINT_ IS THAT IT’S UP TO YOU,” Papyrus gripes, flailing his arms around before grabbing another foam block. “I SPENT AN ENTIRE CHAPTER DISASSEMBLING SHIPS-IN-BOTTLES ONCE. JUST F...JUST _PICK_ SOMETHING, AND DO IT.”

Papyrus takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. He turns to look at his other self. He brandishes the harmless foam block; his fingers don’t even make an impression in the so-soft-it’s-crumbling surface

“OR YOU CAN WORK HERE, AND I’LL PAY YOU TO DO IT.” He makes a wordless, ambiguous sound. “IF YOU THINK THAT _YOU_ CAN ‘BEHAVE,’ AS YOU’RE SO FOND OF SAYING.” Edge has said that word exactly once since arriving in this universe, and they both know it.

Edge cocks an orbital at him, slow as honey. His teeth part, magic seething across his zygoma as he leans in. And to prove Papyrus isn’t the only one who can provoke, the gratingly narrow frequencies of his voice are slowed almost to vibrato, its resonance deepened until it’s almost not a screech. He leans a hand on the table, tilts a big, knobby hip out...invitingly? Is that what this is supposed to be?

“WILL _YOU_ MAKE ME IF I DON’T?”

Good. Lord. That _is_ what this is supposed to be.

“NYEH?” A short, surprised noise blorts out of Papyrus’s skull. “NYEH HEH HEH _HEH__hhh_….” His hilarity tightens to a wheeze; he doesn’t exactly double over, but his ribs ache anyways. “NyYHEH HeH _HEH__hh__hhh_...”

Edge looks gratifyingly disturbed, and Papyrus takes his sweet time getting all the (officially hysterical) laughter out of his system. That’s one of the important acting lessons he and Mettaton had learned over the years. A spoonful of sugar doesn’t help the medicine go down when you like it as poignantly medicine-flavored as they do. Bitter never tastes as sweet as when they lick it from each other’s knuckles afterwards, even when only one of them has a tongue.

Okay, yes. _Now_ he’s doubled over, leaning his hands on the counter as his whole body shakes with it.

Papyrus _knows_ he’s good-looking. Even humans turns their heads to watch him go by, and he can’t say it isn’t a little gratifying. Papyrus is almost unbearably handsome. He is also a complete doofus.

Papyrus takes in the shorter, beefier stature of the Self next to him through the magic wavering up in his sockets, narrowing against the truth as it spills over. Those symmetrical features spiced up with tastefully placed scars, those burgundy eyes smoldering with relentlessly sexual menace, each perfect limb wrapped in leather like whipcords to emphasize his breathtakingly graceful, predatory movements. Those rolling hips as he walks drawing the eye, his buckles and leathers silent until he _makes_ them creak or jingle to put your eyes exactly where he _wants_ them. The crimson cape-scarf short enough to show everything just as well from the back like the curtain rising at a sold-out play, but that’s not even the clincher.

That’s how he looks right _now_, pausing to socket-blink as the smoldering points inside expand in pretty, doelike confusion. The creation of uncertainty, that vulnerability shining through the jagged cracks until you’re not sure if he’s the despoiler or the one in desperate need of despoiling. Every look, word, and gesture a thrillingly ambiguous promise of utterly unspeakable things, a promise that makes him very difficult to look away from.

Those two humans might have been a block and a half away, but Edge had still flinched, and Papyrus had still heard the panties hitting the ground so hard he’s surprised they didn’t leave craters like atom bombs. Edge is the most relentlessly sexually attractive creature just about anyone who sees him has ever seen, and the only people who seem not to have noticed are Sans and you. Grillby’s has never been so consistently and suspiciously half-full, and fully half the patrons seem to spend most of their time with their eyes glued to Edge, or the table under which Edge guards his precious, pernicious, filthy little pigeon-magpie hybrid of a brother. (Who is currently being subjected to whatever plot Sans and Grillby have come up with to get Red to let them clean up his nest.)

There are many things Papyrus just _doesn’t do_, although there are a few he’s tried out just to make sure. At this moment, he’s laughing and crying at the same time because he’s never wanted to do one of them _more_, and to do yet another _less_.

“I AM THE GREAT PAPYRUS,” Papyrus announces eventually with a hitching, breathy lilt, wiping spent magic from his face carefully with the heel of his gloved hand. “I HAVE NEVER AND WILL NEVER FORCE ANYONE TO DO ANYTHING. I AM ALSO THE BEST LIAR EVER TO HAVE EXISTED, AND HAVE BEEN FOR NEARLY SIX WEEKS. THANKS FOR THAT, BY THE WAY.”

Edge flinches, nasal aperture twitching as Papyrus straightens and tucks his soiled gloves away, and pulls another pair out of his capacious front overall pocket. Papyrus takes another deep breath, and the overwhelming urge to kill Edge passes more quickly than usual.

Papyrus squares his shoulders, smiles confidently.

“I HAVE TO ADMIT...THE PANTS ARE QUITE FLATTERING,” he allows, then nods to make it extra obvious it was a concession. “I COULD CERTAINLY PAINT EVERY NOTCH ON YOUR YOUR ISCHIUM FROM MEMORY AT THIS POINT.”

Edge doesn’t react how he expected. “THANK YOU,” he caws with a nod that isn’t rude at all. Papyrus feels his eyes flicker in their sockets uncertainly, and Edge glances away, then back at him with a measured exhale.

“MY BROTHER MAKES MY CLOTHES,” Edge says…not quietly, but with dignity. “MATERIALS HAVE...BEEN PROVIDED. FOR HIM TO CONTINUE TO DO THAT. SO…THANK YOU.”

Papyrus opens and closes his mouth, looks down. The giggles are well and truly out of his system for now.

“THEY’RE VERY GOOD,” he tries. “I HEARD HE...KNITS.”

“NYES...” Edge looks at him sidelong.

Papyrus gazes long and hard into the wine-dark eyes of his own worst case scenario.

“I’M TRYING TO HATE YOU LESS,” he admits bluntly.

Edge’s scarred face goes shockingly soft all at once. He closes his razor sharp teeth with a gentle click.

“Don’t,” Edge says. Says _softly,_ despite the urgency in his tone. He lifts his chin as if to take a blow, his smooth vertebrae bared above his cape-like scarf for the knife. Papyrus can’t breathe, feels stillness creep into his bones like the memory of a memory, but Edge isn’t done.

“Don’t _ever_ stop hating me,” he whispers from his motionless skull, those bloody eyes boring into Papyrus’s sockets. “You should hate me as much as you can, as often as you can. Don’t tempt yourself to forget what I’ve done.”

And then he politely looks at the wall instead, so he won’t see Papyrus weeping without laughing this time. Even though he can apparently smell that sort of thing.

“I DON’T WANT TO,” Papyrus says roughly. It’s unclear whether he means that he doesn’t want to hate him, or that he doesn’t want to _stop_ hating him. Or he doesn’t want to forget? Nevertheless, the walls ring with the undeniable truth of his words in a way neither of them can argue with. Papyrus’s bones rattle, muffled by his undergarments as he hugs himself tightly. “WHY DO YOU THINK I’M BETTER THAN YOU?”

Edge lets out a nasty bark of laughter. That sentence means about five different things at once, and he lets it hang itself out to dry.

“I KNOW FOR A FACT THAT YOU ARE NOT,” he says easily, voice back to its usual shrill harshness. “FOR THE OBVIOUS REASON. I…HOW MANY GLOVES DO YOU _HAVE_ IN THERE?” he adds with a note of mild and unexpectedly sincere interest. Papyrus is tucking the second pair of soiled gloves into his phone, and pulling out yet a third pair in yet a third outfit-harmonizing shade.

“FOR _TODAY_?” Papyrus says, arching an orbital dryly despite its recent moistening. “SEVENTEEN PAIRS.”

“WOWIE.”

“YES. WOWIE. IT HAS BEEN DRAINING.”

Edge huffs impatiently.

“AND YET MY SKILLS REMAIN UNTAPPED, DESPITE THE LURE OF A _FRIENDLY COMPETITION_.”

“YOU HAVE SKILLS,” Papyrus insists. “THE VAST MAJORITY OF THEM ARE REMARKABLY BAD FOR OTHER PEOPLES’ HEALTH. YOU CAN’T FIND OUT WHAT THEY’RE ACTUALLY _GOOD_ FOR UNTIL YOU TRY SOMETHING ELSE.” Papyrus rolls his black eyes around in his black sockets for dramatic effect. “AND IT WOULD APPEAR THAT COMING TO AN ENTIRELY NEW UNIVERSE HAS PRESENTED YOU WITH THE UNPRECEDENTED OPPORTUNITY TO DO SO! NOW. WORK HERE AND GET SOME MONEY IN YOUR POCKETS, AND I’LL BE HERE TO MAKE SURE YOU DON’T MAIM ANYONE WITH A BOUQUET BY ACCIDENT.”

Edge grins. “WHAT ABOUT ON PURPOSE? SOME DISCREET _PRECISION_ MAIMING, PERHAPS?”

Papyrus’s eyes dart up and take in Edge’s brightly ingenuous expression, and a traitorous snort escapes from between his teeth. Papyrus glances away, feels his magic seethe across his face.

“YOUR PAY WILL BE DOCKED PER MAIMING,” Papyrus snerks out, fingers flying as he begins assembling one of his more ambitious arrangements. “CONSIDER CAREFULLY, OR YOU WON’T BE ABLE TO BUY ANYTHING AT THE END OF THE WEEK.” His eyes dart down to Edge’s feet, quickly assessing the situation along with just how rigid Edge keeps his spine whenever Papyrus is in the room. Edge and Red may be both beggars and choosers, but tailors still aren't cobblers.

“WHAT ON EARTH WOULD I _BUY_?” Edge objects, not paying all that much attention. Well, he’s paying attention to potential threats, angling for advantage, and a host of other things that won’t take him very far from where he is towards where he probably should try to be going. He needs to learn to pay attention to _other_ things, and Papyrus is nothing if not here to help. “IF MY BROTHER AND I WILL NEVER _NEED_ FOR ANYTHING, IF EVERYTHING’S BEEN PROVIDED FOR, WHY WOULD I--”

“_NEW_ OXBLOOD LEATHERETTE SEVEN-INCH STILETTO _BOOTS_,” Papyrus interrupts triumphantly; Edge’s eyes shrink with sudden, uncontrollable lust. Papyrus tosses his florist’s shears on the table, rotates his final arrangement and straightens with a dramatic, perfectly timed flourish. Papyrus doesn’t have to look at Edge’s expression. Papyrus knows his own skill, and he takes his time looking at the impressive results of its application.

“…AND A _CAR_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Yes, Sans has had the video of the first time Papyrus rode in a car in his phone for fifteen years, and still looks at it when he’s having one of his Bad Days.
> 
> 2\. The song for the chapter is The Waitress by Tori Amos. It’s a song about realizing your ideals aren’t enough to protect you from confronting your own capacity for violence. The refrain of “But I believe in peace, bitch,” is of course immediately funny anywhere adjacent to Papyrus.
> 
> But played live, this song turns into a 12 minute psychedelic full band jam with additional lyrics that significantly expand the meaning, and take it closer to what’s actually going on between the lines. It explains that believing in ideals is empty unless you also believe in people (I believe in her goodness/darkness); it also requires acknowledgement of everyone’s capacity to give and receive harm (I know she can kill me). This acknowledgement does not, however, absolve (But I believe that she’s a devil-bitch).
> 
> In other words, the song is about the realization that believing in peace requires not only that you do not kill, but that you believe in other people’s capacity to refrain from violence. This becomes more complex when the line between selves and others becomes blurred.
> 
> It usually makes me cry. So if you’re feeling brave and/or have the time, here’s a performance of that:
> 
> https://youtu.be/AFmv3h_ic_w
> 
> Incidentally, if you’ve ever seen the “Oil Spill” episode of Bob’s Burgers, that was 100% meant to be Tori Amos. I found it delightful, but imho the real deal actually has more humping. It’s not subtle.
> 
> 3\. Credit for Papyrus+Tie-Dye headcanon goes to peachMeowchi/peachmeowzipan, whose Papyrusing is unparalleled and scintillating. highly recommended.


	10. presents of mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The hardest thing in the world is simplicity. And the most fearful thing, too. You have to strip yourself of all your disguises, some of which you didn’t know you had.  
You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone.”  
—James Baldwin  
https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2994/james-baldwin-the-art-of-fiction-no-78-james-baldwin
> 
> Depeche Mode – Useless  
https://youtu.be/6H-g5QuCI_0

The Great and Terrible Papyrus observes the layout of his new kitchen, trying to think of a way to make it annoy him less. Being Great and Terrible is a heavy burden to bear, but luckily that’s just a nickname, much like ‘Edge’. Which he has agreed to answer to for as long as it is required of him, but he doesn’t have to _like_ it.

He doesn’t have to _think_ it, or accept it.

He doesn’t accept it.

Not too sure he accepts this kitchen, either.

“ARE YOU SURE THEY DIDN’T HAVE ANYTHING _LONGER_?”

Sans suppresses a growl of annoyance. Papyrus wonders if Sans knows he can tell when he’s suppressing them, then stops because of course he does. The little shit.

“fucks _sakes_, boss. you were there with me. ya know everything i know.”

Papyrus looks down at Sans. He flinches when their eyes meet because his brother flinches. Then they have one of those absolutely fantastic moments that keep happening ever since they got here, where they just stare at each other in wordless, tortured bafflement.

An excuse to stop presents itself in his peripheral vision. Papyrus gestures angrily at the table. “AND WHAT IS _THIS_ GARBAGE?”

Sans’s foci flicker softly. “shortstack gave me the shit ta make the oven cook our food.”

“OH?” Papyrus trills. “ARE YOU GOING TO _COOK_ FOR ME, BROTHER?”

Sans shuffles uncertainly. “can if ya want me to,” he tries. “you, uh-”

“I WAS KIDDING,” Papyrus interrupts quickly. “WHEN DEATH COMES, I’D PREFER IT TO BE SWIFT.”

Sans snickers and relaxes, scratching his coccyx amiably. From the front. Disgusting. “hey. i do okay with the sauce.”

“YES, IF I _HOVER_.” Papyrus feels his traitorous mouth twitching at the corners. “IT’S TWICE AS MUCH TROUBLE AS JUST DOING IT MYSELF.”

Sans shrugs, then narrows his sockets and looks up at him like a smug little cat. “can’t let ya get complacent, can i? jus’ cause you c’n eat anything doesn’t mean ya _should_.”

Papyrus graciously lets his brother see the thin but sincere smile he’s won from him, wiping his fingers along his orbital bone like he’s got a headache.

“WELL. FAR BE IT FROM ME TO SAY I HAVEN’T BEEN UNNATURALLY STRENGTHENED BY SURVIVING YOUR ATTEMPTS TO POISON ME THUS FAR.” He looks around the room, trying to think about ways to make it seem less stark. He walks over to the window above the kitchen sink, reaches up to test how much reinforcement the frame can take. Might be best to just replace the whole thing with--

Sans huffs, distracting him. “this’s--”

“IF YOU SAY ~_THIS IS WEIRD__~_ IN THAT INSUFFERABLE MUMBLE OF YOURS _ONE_ MORE TIME, BROTHER, I _WILL_ THROW YOU OUT THE _FUCKING_ WINDOW,” Papyrus hollers directly at the aforementioned window. It rattles dangerously, especially when he does his impression of Sans’s voice. “I DON’T WANT TO. I HATE THE CONCEPT. IN FACT, I ALREADY REGRET IT, AND YET I WILL HAVE NO CHOICE. BECAUSE YOUR DESPERATE AND LIMITLESS NEED TO BE THROWN OUT A WINDOW BY _SOMEONE_ WILL REMAIN, AND I AM THE ONLY OTHER PERSON HERE.”

“..._odd_,” Sans purrs, having shuffled over to the sink alongside to grin up at him some more. The cat has now gnawed his way through a whole aviary’s worth of canaries. Papyrus manages to hold in the jittery laugh that wants to escape him. That wasn’t even a joke. Just...witty banter, maybe, if he’s being generous. But Papyrus is nothing if not that. Speaking of which.

“GO SORT THE LAUNDRY, BROTHER,” he caws, and Sans’s face falls.

“aww, come on,” he whines, “we only got like ten outfits betw-”

“AND THEY WILL BE SORTED BY _COLOR_, YOU INSUFFERABLE CHAOS GOBLIN. WHITES TO THE SIDE!!”

Papyrus glances sidelong at his unhurried retreat just in time to watch Sans scratch his coccyx again on the way down the stairs. Ostentatiously, and with his stiffened middle phalanx. Well, at least he had the grace to do it from the back this time. Papyrus lets his mouth grin and his shoulders wiggle with amusement, just for a second.

He _doesn’t_ let himself think about the Pink Shirt Fiasco (nor the cableknit turtleneck made with unexpectedly non-colorfast yarn that had managed to surprise them both in equal measure), but that’s only because he’s put a moratorium on thinking about literally anything that happened before two months ago. Sans hasn’t said anything, but that’s a sure sign he’s on board with that. Not talking about things is one of their most sacred family traditions.

Papyrus is chewing gum in preparation for sealing it along where glass meets wood so the window will stop rattling (and also keep Papyrus’s not-an-indoor-voice indoors anyways since his magic will be in the gum when he applies it), when he gets that _itch_.

With a grating groan like a tin can being torn in half, he yanks the paper note out of his scarf pocket (his pants, predictably, have no pockets since they ruin the line).

“BOUNCING BETTYS” have added themselves to the list of “THINGS THAT COUNT AS DEADLY WEAPONS” portion of the List.

Papyrus’s grumble sounds suspiciously like “nyan nyan” because he’s still vociferously chewing his gum, so he stops grumbling. Doesn’t stop him from wondering why the hell they bothered giving them a house if Papyrus isn’t even allowed to _protect_ it. Maybe he should start asking his other self before each time he locks the front door, too. Perhaps there is a form that needs filling out for that.

“SPRING-LOADED NETS” reluctantly adds itself to the list of “NON-DEADLY METHODS OF TEMPORARY RESTRAINT AS LONG AS YOU ALSO EXERCISE IT.”

Papyrus hates being humored.

He stuffs the note back away, but he doesn’t throw it out. Yet. Besides, he has a feeling he probably _can’t_.

Once the window’s done Papyrus crouches under the sink checking the soundness and composition of the plumbing. He’s graduated to strategizing methods for tampering so he can counteract them by the time his brother returns from sorting all ten outfits they have between them. Only an hour and a half of undilated time; a new record. He must have really been applying himself. At least they’d been allowed a house near the downtown and college with the water sourced from underground so it actually does some good when they’re thirsty or dirty. Small favors.

His brother’s sneakers unmistakably approach with a faint squeak across the linoleum, so Papyrus pulls his head out from between the back of the cupboard and the u-bend and stands, regloving his bare hand with a sigh to let the rawest edge (…_ha_…) of his annoyance out.

“gotcha somethin’, boss.”

Papyrus turns toward his brother’s low, reluctant-sounding growl. It’s not; that’s just how he sounds when he’s having an emotion that isn’t killing rage or despair. His posture’s all hunched; apparently whatever it is, he both values it highly and is worried Papyrus won’t like it.

Shit. Papyrus decides to do his utmost to try to like it. There’s no doubt it’s stolen; Papyrus has kept an even tighter grip on the pursestrings since the incident from their first 24 hours here. He’s even more flattered. Sans tends to cling more tightly to stolen goods than those acquired by legitimate means.

Sans huffs enigmatically, looks at the wall, and yanks his hand out of his pocket to thrust it up at Papyrus. There’s an extremely neat and clean roll of white cloth in it, the outer corner in a decorative little fold that also _keeps_ it rolled until it’s ready to be used. It’s very clever, actually. Magic seethes across his face. Neat, clean, useful, and clever; it’s exactly the sort of thing Papyrus likes, brothers notwithstanding.

“A _NAPKIN_?” Papyrus says with a cocked orbital. He takes it reverently. “DO I HAVE SOMETHING IN MY TEETH?”

“fuck _you_,” Sans grunts roughly, rubbing his chin with a mitten. “you don’t even-” he cuts off with another little growl, staring at the handle of the refrigerator. He takes a deep breath, but it still goes out again shaky as hell. “you get poured out, this cleans it up like it never happened,” he grates out, a purplish blush seething across his zygoma. It makes the grooves beneath his sockets look deeper. Also, what the everloving fuck.

“YES, OF _COURSE_. BECAUSE I HAVE _THAT_ PROBLEM SO OFTEN.” Papyrus has no idea what’s going on, but that’s pretty much his fucking life now so he just waits for Sans to elaborate.

“_fuck_ you,” Sans growls, struggling mightily with another neither-rage-nor-despair emotion. A spike of deep, existential terror pierces Papyrus’s soul. “s’jus’…weird shit happens here sometimes. kinda makes you…it feels like...” Sans chokes, stares at the floor. ‘m jus’ tryin’ ta _help_,” he whispers, something close enough to shame in his tone making Papyrus’s fear sharpen even more.

“ARE YOU TRYING TO _INSINUATE_ SOMETHING?” Papyrus hears the screechy rind of panic on his own voice, and he hates that Sans can hear it, too. He takes a deep breath, lets it out. He looks down at his brother. Sans looks up at him in anguish, watches him shaking with it. More of that stupid, emotionally fraught, wordless, _worthless_ looking.

He can’t take it. This is fucking ridiculous. Nothing here makes sense, and the thing that makes the least sense here is the two of them. It’s absolutely unbearable. Papyrus is definitely about to start screaming, but his brother beats him to the verbal punch.

“fuck you,” Sans says slowly, a steady(ing) singsong growl from behind his placid, dangerous grin. “don’t like yer _napkin,_ habout you roll it up, stick it up your claphappy pisshole, light the fuse n and blow yer useless fuckin’ dick off?”

A loud, weird sound escapes Papyrus’s skull as he goggles down at his brother. He steps back, the napkin unrolling with a flick as he slaps it over his face. His shoulders are shaking, and he can hear his brother say “...boss?” in a moderately freaked-out tone

Papyrus uncovers his face, flaps the napkin at his brother weakly.

“THIS… THAT WOULD MAKE THIS...” He covers his sockets with it again and chokes out, “A _SMALL_-IMPROV’D _COCK-_TAIL!”

Sans has always said that if people knew the excruciating lengths to which Papyrus could torture a pun, they’d be too horrified to ever challenge him again. Papyrus can’t really disagree, but he’d never waste a true beaut like that on anyone but Sans. They both laugh at that until they cry, and then share the bounty of the napkin together. Sans explains that he has some extras, and gives him two more for sauce. They can apparently be used regularly for quite some time before they get...saturated, or something. Considering how much slime Sans emits constantly, Papyrus is understandably impressed by his endorsement. It’s obvious now that he stole them from Grillby, and Grillby didn’t say anything or try to stop him.

Papyrus tries not to think about their debt deepening, holds tight instead to his little bit of good news. He doesn’t want to waste it, after all. Doesn’t want it to come out wrong and ruin everything. That little light of hope, buried deep but burning bright. They’re in debt, but perhaps not _hopelessly_ so.

Papyrus sits on the counter with his legs crossed high at the knee like the spicy little snack he is, fantasizes about having proper boots, and supervises Sans making the necessary adjustments to the stove with the materials the Sans of this place has provided them. A human stove, then. He briefly wonders why monsters use human goods instead of just making their own, then yanks his mental hand away like the thought itself is a hot stove. If he thinks too much about being here on the surface, outside the barrier, and all the things he doesn’t know…attacks he can’t anticipate, systems he can’t manipulate because he doesn’t know they exist…

Well.

It’s much more comfortable to stick to criticizing whatever Sans is doing, demand explanations he doesn’t bother listening to, and spend some quality time entertaining each other in the ways that soothe them both. Sans’s increasingly inventive suggestions for his head, his ass, his dick, his nasal cavity, and presumably other people’s body parts, household objects, and dust make a strong counterpoint to his agreeable heckling. It’s nice. Almost makes this place start to feel like something that might one day be possible to make into a home.

The spark of traitorous hope pinches his soul like a thorn. He hopes Sans can’t tell. Then Sans finishes up, groans his way theatrically back to his feet and starts bitching about the stark bareness of the house they’ve been allotted. He’s gentling his broken grin into a sincere smile, so obviously he _can’t_ tell. Both of them are moderately distressed by the sterility of the empty house, probably because it makes them hyperaware of just how much filth they’d gotten used to. Just how dirty...dusty….and ultimately _unlivable_ everything had become.

Neither of them deserve nice things, but Sans had given Papyrus one anyways. Sans does everything for a reason, it’s just up to Papyrus to puzzle it out. Sans is talking about how he’s been looking around (finally), saw some trash piles on the other side of town that might be good to go picking through for some new home decor. He puts his hand on the counter, uses the other to casually pull open the door to the fridge. “might be we c’n fi...”

Sans freezes, and Papyrus immediately and silently slithers off the counter and into a ready stance, hand cocked at his hip.

“’s already food in here,” Sans whispers. Bone rattles faintly against the countertop.

Papyrus’s ribcage feels like something cold and heavy has taken up residence inside it. He’s more than accustomed to taking Sans’s cues for when it’s time to fight, he’s _trained_ to do it. More than habit, even; it’s instinct at this point. Sans is responsible for letting him know when it’s time for Papyrus to be put to use. But now…ever since they’ve been here…

This again. Sans hasn’t been weird like _this_ about food in a long time. Not since...fuck. Since Papyrus was still in stripes, his brother stuffing his pockets with ruinously expensive baked goods, grabbing his hand and taking them through a shortcut to the next ‘safe place’.

Everyone here already knows about his brother’s little hoards. They’re multiple at this point. He’d even cut out some boards in the wall under Table Nine at Grillby’s and stuffed a bunch of crap in there, then sealed it back up so well you’d never even know it was there. (And Sans says he has no artistic talent.) They also know Sans will steal anything that isn’t nailed down, whether it’s useful or not. He picks pockets and his nasal cavity with equal alacrity. Even the bun he’d shanked had been sanguine about it [...ha…] once it had been sorted that something he’d said to Sans about Papyrus had, in their underground, been an extraordinarily explicit threat. Even that’s weird; Papyrus has been handling those kind of threats on his own for thousands of years.

Whatever’s in the fridge has shaken him, and Papyrus doesn’t even know _why_. It’s not fair. Papyrus is always an open book to his brother, every pullable string found unerringly by Sans’s battered bone fingertips since he’s the one who put them there in the first place. It would be easier to deal with if he actually could drum up resentment. Instead, he just feels helpless to fix whatever this problem is, and that’s a million times worse.

He feels a rush of gratitude toward the Grillby of this world, then swallows the overwhelming backwash of bitterness that follows it. Doesn’t think about why, and it takes almost all his strength. Enough that he can’t react right away when Sans starts rummaging in the fridge before Papyrus has a chance to check and inventory everything in there first.

Grillby had explained to him that _here_, the water and dirt and rocks in his underground are _all_ restorative. He’d told Papyrus how his own Sans had tried to explain it to him once, how monsters loving and hoping and being compassionate affected their environment. Just being themselves and existing had made each grain of sand into a veritable feast. Grillby had admitted with an odd little half-smile that he hadn’t been all that interested, but that now he wished he’d listened better.

Makes a kind of sense when Papyrus thinks about it. Papyrus had to cook food for he and his brother in order to get what they need out of it. In the underground they’re from, only prepared foods seeded with a negligible amount of personal magic could _heal_.

Grillby had reassured Papyrus, even as unforgivably inebriated as he had allowed himself to become, that everyone here knows Sans is under Papyrus’s protection. Even if they don’t know what the symbols they wear mean, even if they don’t have the same words for things, they can see how they _act_. And Papyrus had managed not to lose his cool when Grillby had told him that everyone also can see just how badly Sans was struggling; his stealing, his drunkenness, his filthy, reeking nest under the table and his little...hoards. That they understood Papyrus would know best how to care for him. That they would follow his lead as much as they could.

Of course, what _they_ don’t know is that Sans _isn’t_ like this.

(Sans is full of bullshit and bravado, deadly threats and their merciless execution. He reeks of cigar smoke, not his own dirty bones, and he never seems to be afraid of anything, especially when he is. Sans is omnipresent and inescapable, not too scared to look outside. Sans is in your face until you want to slap him away, not shaking his bones apart and weeping under a fucking table.)

No one here can tell that Papyrus doesn’t know why Sans is doing things he hasn’t done since Papyrus was too little to say anything about it.

(Papyrus has a feeling he knows exactly why Sans is acting like they’ve gone back in time. Papyrus has never wanted to know anything less, and his brother almost certainly feels the same.)

Papyrus didn’t let himself fear that Sans might just...stay at Grillby’s. To fear that Sans might _want_ to. To think that this place, even with its unknowable dangers… might have places here where Sans might not _need_ Papyrus’s protection. Because then...if he’d let himself _believe that_…

(Endless days waiting for Sans to come back. Holding everything he left behind close, breathing in the scent of a promise: Sans will come back. He will _come back_. Sans won’t leave him alone. He’ll always come back, and he’ll always hug Papyrus when he does. Even the times his clothes are torn and he’s shaking, the scent of old magic wrenched out unwilling, loving bones tainted with the reek of violence, of strangers, of dust. Papyrus keeps the old clothes and blankets that only smell like him and Sans close to him. He hugs them in his brother’s absence when it gets too hard to stay alone, to stay still, to stay quiet. He bites the cloth to keep from screaming; Sans repairs that damage right along with the rest without mentioning it.)

Papyrus doesn’t think about it even harder. He knows what he’s capable of.

Ice pierces Papyrus’s heart as his brother starts muttering indistinctly, rummaging through the fridge, putting some of it in his phone, backing away and looking around as if for some place to hide. His knack of speaking so Papyrus can’t understand him always makes him afraid, makes him unsure what’s happening. If it _is_ happening.

Is this really...real? Is he really standing in a kitchen of a house they’ve been given to live in? That comes with water they can drink, food they can eat, and beds, _multiple_? Because despite the bareness of the main rooms, the bedrooms had each come with beds. Sheets folded with hospital corners, plain blankets that are nonetheless soft and comfortable. Clean pillows. A bathroom with a shower, and a toilet they have no use for.

Sans can fill the walls with hoards of food if he chooses. He can stuff his mattress with stolen G, then curl up like an exhausted little animal and snooze his life away right on top. But Papyrus can’t...he can’t ring it with deadly traps, can’t even mark his scent around the perimeter because the ‘neighbors will complain’, can’t even protect...he can’t…

He can’t use his voice. And the worst part about it is that he feels relieved. Like someone finally took away a knife that he can’t stop cutting himself on. No way to save Sans from himself at all costs. It’s a realization that left him husked with a second one following on its heels: he’s not sure he wants to. He’s not sure if there’s a way for anyone to find out if he does use his voice. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if Sans decides to try and make him. Other than it will be the worst thing possible, because that is what Papyrus always does.

This house seems bare. Sans and Papyrus are desperate to fill it up with _something_, so they can stop staring in horror at the wreckage they’ve made of each other. The ceaselessly collapsing ruin of brothers who don’t know how to be brothers anymore.

“THEN _LEARN_, FOR FUCKS SAKES!” he hears in his own voice, in the rioting silence of his own memory. But it’s not really him. It’s the other Papyrus, the one who…

Terrifyingly oblivious, Sans stands in the narrow gap to block the fridge door, starts putting slices of cheese (?) into his pockets. His bare fingers make pit stops to rasp over his face between the fridge and his pockets, his crushed little mouth muttering nonsense all the while.

“_I HAVE A JOB!!_” Papyrus screams desperately, cursing himself. He was trying to save this for a truly bad time, but Papyrus has always been an overfull balloon. The slightest pressure and words and deeds just start squirting out of him like a whoopee cushion. Disgusting. “I...GOT A JOB. WORK.”

“…huh?” Sans closes the fridge and turns around, dazed like Papyrus just announced the success of Sans’s suggested napkin-pisshole experiment or something. Which would be fairly impressive consider Papyrus doesn’t have a pisshole, nor piss to supply a hole with that purpose.

“A JOB. AT THE FLOWER THING. SHOP.”

“with the creampuff?”

“YES. THE OTHER ME. HE’S...”

“he sure is,” Sans says with a disturbing hint of...fondness?

Papyrus sighs uncomfortably, then goes ahead and lets himself feel pleased. “IT’S MONEY. THAT WILL HAPPEN AT REGULAR INTERVALS, AS WILL MY PERIODIC ABSENCE. ON ACCOUNT OF I WILL BE THERE INSTEAD OF HERE.”

Sans’s face softens for a split second; he knows Papyrus is chafing. Papyrus can’t even manage to drum up annoyance at the carefully concealed relief in his brother's posture, so he just barrels onward.

“I’M GOING TO BUY US A TV. WELL. THE FLOATING SCREEN-THING THEY HAVE HERE. WHATEVER.”

Sans makes a singsong noise of amused uncertainty, surprised and pleased. _Proud_, and Papyrus feels like he just double fisted a pair of Grillby’s milkshakes. Sans looking at him that way makes him feel like he could do anything. Like it might actually be okay, somehow.

“they don’t make mettatons like they used to,” Sans points out. “only two arms.”

“AND WHAT’S WRONG WITH TWO ARMS, HMMMM?” Papyrus is doing his best not to grin. His best is failing.

“…heh.” Sans’s sockets flatten on the bottom in a way Papyrus hasn’t seen in a long, long time. “’s like metta’s production a solomon, maybe. mighta lost two arms, but e’s all_ right_ now.”

Papyrus groans in exaggerated, fake outrage. “GOOD _LORD_, SANS, WHAT HAVE I _TOLD_ YOU ABOUT...”

Papyrus trails off when Sans’s face freezes and locks up, realizing his mistake too late.

Sans is rigid and motionless now. Well. Not surprising. Papyrus always ruins everything. New universe, same Great and Terrible Papyrus opening his ceaselessly flapping teeth to spew out shit all over their “new life”.

Sans shudders, red foci pinned and hard as he stares at the wall. Probably not seeing the wall.

“think we’re already dead, papy?”

Papyrus shudders from the depths of his soul, hugs himself to try and muffle the rattle.

“_NO_,” he coughs out, the edges of his Self grating against him like an unset bone. “HELL MAY BE A MYTH, BUT REST ASSURED THAT IF WE _DO_ MANAGE TO ACTUALLY END IT SOMEDAY, HELL WILL COME INTO EXISTENCE JUST FOR ME.”

“maybe this _is_ hell. maybe we jus’ have ta sit in it for the rest of eternity.”

“I _KNOW_ THIS ISN’T HELL,” Papyrus says helplessly, stupidly, “BECAUSE YOU’RE HERE.” Stupid mouth, stupider words whacking out of his skull like bricks to the face. “I’M NOT ALONE.”

Sans is shivering, arms wrapped around himself tight just like Papyrus had done. Both of them desperately trying to hold it all in, to somehow hold themselves together…and failing to _do_ so together.

“...heh.”

(No matter how they suffer, they’ll do it together.)

Papyrus can’t stop himself. He steps forward, reaches out a hand and puts it on his brother’s shoulder. The noise Sans makes is raw and ragged; he flinches, twists away with a violent flail of his arm.

And then he’s gone.

Papyrus stares at the spot his brother last was until his phone goes off. Could be minutes. Could be hours. It doesn’t matter either way. At some point he went to his knees, sitting here staring at the floor like he’s the one with the damaged mind.

He doesn’t need to look at the message. He already knows what it says.

Papyrus’s soul aches so hard he wishes they _had_ just annihilated everything in their attempt to get away. He wants to kill something, wants to chase Sans down and drag him back, make him _talk_, make him actually fucking _listen_ for a change_…_ he wants him to…

Well.

Papyrus wants a lot of things he’s quite accustomed to not getting.

In the end, he takes an impossible path to the woods around Ebott and destroys as many of Papyrus’s puzzles as he can find.

Once his rage is spent he regrets it, and starts sullenly putting them back. He reassembles four, but the fifth is repaired already when he gets to it. He solves it instead. Then he goes to the next and solves that one, too. He solves them all.

It takes about two days, since there are more now than when he started.

The third day, he starts making traps. Whenever he comes back to them, their lethality has been disabled.

Papyrus pulls the loop, squints stoically against the cloud of glitter.

The tie dye banner that unfurls has hot pink glitter words that spell out BANG!

Batiked bones stand in sharp relief.

They make sure they never see each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact! I’m writing direct from Janktown 2012, and a few of my keys null and/or hit twice if I breathe wrong. So without my admittedly slapdash editing efforts, you would be reading the harrowing tale of Re and his brother Egg.  
I’m glad we had this time together. I truly am.


	11. my hand in the dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The pAper chAse – We Know Where You Sleep
> 
> https://youtu.be/RqJ0eSI53YU  

> 
> That sharp sound? That weird, disturbing percussion throughout? It’s...it’s fucking _scissors_, man. It’s...like...oh god, it’s like ten pairs of _fucking scissors_.
> 
> **[past abuse, dubcon, violence & threats]**

“Guess what?” you pant quietly.

Sans doesn’t even bother opening a socket.

“…chicken butt?”

“Oh, is that what I’m fucking?” you huff into his vertebrae. Ange and the kids are at Toriel’s, but force of habit keeps your voice low. Sans’s pleased but hushed giggle inspires you to turn it into a moan with your tongue. His next breath shakes on the way in, and he moans that one out too because you’re fucking him with a little more purpose, now.

You and Sans are sharing a mutual pleasure toy for people who want to penetrate a sexual partner hands-free. They have to be custom made, or at least yours definitely had to, but in your humble opinion it was more than worth the time and expense. Sans adores it. He likes to fuck you with it once in a while when his genitalia isn’t a shape that can go inside yours, and the toy’s also programmed with the dimensions of his bare pubis for when it won’t come out for him at all.

But what truly won his nonexistent heart is the way you let him lie there and do nothing while you fuck him until he can’t see. You’re a pretty big fan yourself, since not only is this easier on your shoulders when he’s in the mood to get railed to tears, it stimulates you both at once without having to use your hands. Easier to kiss and hold him too, and you’re doing both in abundance. His arm hangs loosely around your shoulders, his respiration deep and ragged as he enjoys the relaxed, mellow fuck you’re providing.

You’ve got an arm tucked under him, your hand gripping vertebral processes to keep your thrusts from scooting his smooth bone body all over the comforter, and the other caressing his slick bones now and then. A crease appears between his closed sockets as he lifts his chin, requesting more kisses you’re happy to bestow.

“mmh…got me curious now,” Sans murmurs. You pull back to let him shiver without breaking your teeth.

“It’s a secret,” you whisper, sliding a sneaky finger between his ribs for him to shudder around. It makes you grin, letting his own movements stimulate his bones and the magic between them.

The dense heat in his pelvis isn’t human shaped (and probably isn’t a chicken butt either), but it’s certainly compatible with several of the toy’s presets from that direction. The extra petting makes him tighten down on it deliciously; the increasing resistance where you’re fucking him is certainly making things interesting for _you_, which is how the toy’s designed to work. A triumph of human and monster engineering, it works a bit better than the last human-made dildo you had for this sort of thing; no straps, and you don’t need superhuman musculature to keep it where it is. The cling particles take care of all that.

Sans once confessed in a remarkably sweaty whisper that it reminds him of something a certain monster can do. Although he hadn’t mentioned any names, he’d told you how it can allow monsters to enjoy each others’ bodies in ways they usually wouldn’t be able to.

“i c’n keep a secret,” Sans slurs, pleasure wavering thick between where his voice comes from and where it comes out. Makes his speech impediment a little more…impeded. He doesn’t even bother clearing his wavering magic, because as long as _he_ knows what he’s saying, you know what he’s saying.

One of your hobbies is getting him to the point where he doesn’t.

“Ohh...in _that_ case…” You push the toy deep to make him gasp, press your lips to the side of his sweaty skull and confess. “You’re _too_ fucking _cute_,” you moan, gripping his iliac crest to thrust a little harder while he shivers and clutches at you.

“oh, fuck,” he whispers shakily, then makes a low, nasal moan when you pair your uncreative but effective sex talk with a hot tongue right in the spot his mandible’s fused. His fingers twitch light and repetitive at your shoulder, unconsciously mimicking your thrusts. His other hand creeps back to his own body to slide toward the front of his pelvis.

You keep doing what you’re doing as phalanges flick open to make a “v” around where you penetrate him. He’s sort of pressing in towards his busily occupied opening, then doing a little rub-tap motion to either side. You pay attention for a minute in case whatever this is shows up again at some point. They do, sometimes. Bigger, smaller, situated different but similar enough that notes should be taken.

He lets out a long, creaking exhale, then cracks open a socket to show you a wide white point soaked with yearning.

“c’n i flip over?”

You nod openmouthed, and he spreads his iridescent genitalia open with eager fingers to help you withdraw. The catch in his breath when the toy slips out sends a thrill right to your core. He lurches up as soon as you sit back on your heels, then flops over on all fours. His sweaty bones flash with a pale cyan-yellow shimmer as he paws a wad of pillows up underneath his body, an economy of movement borne of his inherent laziness. Mmh, what a little gremlin he is. Makes you want to fuck the shit out of him.

Sans grabs the wad and leans into it heavily, then slides his femurs apart. He arches his spine to present his pelvis with its shadowed and glistening interior, peeking back over his shoulder at you with an adorable mewl-sigh as he waggles it in what he’s decided is a tempting manner.

You find it utterly charming (so, mission accomplished, you suppose), and you think of how reluctant you’d been to do it in this position at first, back when you’d first gotten this cling-particle dildo. It definitely gave you more insight into why he always likes to be able to see your face when you’re fooling around without souls, since being unable to see his very well made you nervous about causing him discomfort, emotional or physical.

Sans had encouraged you to touch his soul while trying it the first time, and it turns out he has nothing but actively positive associations with turning his back to someone he’s comfortable enough to show his soul to. His heated anticipation was laced with trust; lying down like this to be pleasured and cared for (and maybe teased for a bit) makes him feel relaxed and safe.

It’s a lot like the position he likes to touch his own soul in when he thinks about sex he’s had or would like to have; when wants to push magic inside for explicitly sexual gratification. He’d let you know he likes to lie this way when he’s moved enough to actually bother masturbating with his genitalia, too; he’d been shy about it, but it really had eased your mind. Curled up on his front, knees out like a little froggit and pushing his forehead into the bed so he can watch body, soul, or both.

The kicker had been when he’d reminded you of that first morning, when you and he had shown each other your souls. The way he’d turned around, given you his back for the first time. Seeing how you felt about him had made him want that. Made him want to be vulnerable, and to trust you with his delicate body.

“…heya, daydreamer.”

Sans peeks back over his shoulder again, and you see his sneaky little fingertips sliding under the flap that covers his opening. That’s fair. Who knows how long you’ve been chilling on your heels staring up into his skeleton business, thinking about fucking him instead of actually doing it.

“Sorry,” you mumble, not actually meaning it very much. “I just really like the sex parts.”

Sans giggles at you. “...me too. now c’mere n do me,” he rumbles, coaxing the fold aside to show you the soft entrance itself. Sans’s sockets get long and narrow as you line up to push back inside his body, then slip shut completely as it sinks inside. “_fuck_, that’s good,” he hisses; his shoulders tense, then shimmy with excitement as he lurches back into you. “m_m_h! yeah, g-give me--”

He cuts off with a gasp when you grip his ilium and take over. Sans’s spine clacks nape to coccyx as you pull nearly all the way out, and he cries out happily as you rock your hips into him hard. The sensitive little curve of his tailbone twitches when you bottom out, so you give it a careful caress with your thumb before palming the dense knobs of his femurs. He shimmies again, moans encouragement as you pull him back over and over. It’s not doing quite as much for you in this position, but you can tell he’s over the moon. By the way his shoulder’s moving, he’s started rubbing off again, too.

Of course _now_ your hips start giving you trouble, but you’re determined to keep going until he gets where he wants to be, orgasm or just ‘done.’ Despite your efforts, you’re buckling. You lean out over him on your hands and then your elbows, his hard vertebral processes pressing up into you as you lie down on his body.

“oh…right there,” he exhales, then bucks his pelvis up into you with a throaty, satisfied sound. His free hand flops around blindly until you take it into your sweaty fingers, give it a squeeze.

“love it when you fuck me…” He lets out a cracked moan, then spreads his femurs even farther. His lower spine bends beyond human limits to let you delve even deeper until there’s hot, twitching bone pressed to your belly. You moan when you get a glimpse of his profile, such as it is. Like someone pushed their finger up between his scrunched-shut sockets, all pained ecstasy. His fixed grin tucks in at the corner as he huffs and sweats, lethargically chasing his pleasure while wriggling and rumbling under you like the world’s laziest cheerleader.

He’s heartbreakingly beautiful like this.

“…_yeah_,” he grunts through his teeth desperately, “do it hard.” He shoves his forehead into the wad of bedding, using the leverage to thrust back against you with a plaintive whine. “…that’s it, darlin’-_’_” his muffled voice breaks in surprise, “o-ohh, shit_…_ yeah, make me come...”

You bring your upper arms in to brace his smooth body as best you can, give his hand one more squeeze before letting go. You fuck him as strenuously as currently possible, resting your sweaty forehead on the back of his skull and groaning openmouthed. Sans makes short, tight little noises until he tenses for a long, silent moment, then all his bones spasm as one. Instead of hollering like you expected, he lets out a long, shuddering exhale; you can feel his magic clenching in rhythmic resistance on the toy as his pelvis quakes under you. You manage to fuck him through his climax before making an involuntary noise of pain, then collapse to the side like a tipped cow. You kinda sound like one too. So much for playing it off.

Sans’s sockets fly open and his eye lights flicker on abruptly, startled and concerned.

“hey,” he pants, batting at you with sheepish fingertips, “shoulda told me it was buggin you…” He helps you lie down on your back, then to your surprise slings a bone leg right over, straddling you with a heavy lurch. Thin, nimble phalanges reach down between his femurs to push the toy back in, then he leans back and lifts his chin with a shaky-satisfied sigh. He holds up some of his weight with his hands on his own femurs to redistribute to his knees, rather than just sitting on you.

“lemme take care of you, k?” He idles back and forth until you both catch your breath, then looks down at you tenderly. “wanna switch it up, or you-”

“I want you just like this,” you gush, gently pawing his ilium to encourage him to ride you. It’s a treat; Sans tends to be lazy during sex, but he somehow always manages to express his enthusiasm despite his natural sluggishness. His right socket slides shut and the corners of his grin curve promiscuously; the pace he sets is predictably slow. You hear your own plaintive groan escaping as you try and fail to move your hips, trying to get some friction.

“yeah?” he taunts as he kneels up a bit, then exhales as he slides down. Then he just tilts his pelvis back and forth without using his legs much, moves in a little circle. “you want me to fuck m’self on it? see if i can get ya off jus’ like this?”

“Yep,” you grunt succinctly, trying to figure out how to get him to do the thing. You’re squeezing his femurs now, and his hands find yours. His smooth fingers stroke teasingly over the back of your hands, hold them in place as his grin sharpens a little more. Then he slows down to a glacial, dirty grind.

Oh, this fucker. He’s messing with you, and it always takes you fucking forever to catch on.

“Seriously?” you complain breathlessly. “_Now_??”

“oooh… better make me pay for it,” he teases in that rumbly purr, still snailing it in coy circles and shedding magic to slide down the glistening toy.

“You’re the _worst_,” you groan. He laughs delightedly as you pull your hands free, grab the sides of his pelvis and push him back and forth furiously. Up and down might be a little much for your hips right now. His giggle turns to a surprised little huff, sockets going round for a brief moment at the change in angle before they drift the rest of the way shut. Sans leans forward, balancing one palm on the bed beside your head as he wobbles loosely, circling his hips in a way that makes the most of how you’re moving him.

“the _wurst_, huh?” He exhales explosively. “guess i _am_ doin’ a good job hiding this sausage.”

Sans puts his hand back down between his legs to do the ‘v’ thing some more. He seems more confident about it now, moans low and shaky as he starts moving under his own steam. “as o-one hot dog vendor to another, gotta s-s—ohh_hh_, shit...” His knees slide farther apart to either side of you, lowering the angle and shortening each stroke.

“…_fuck_, that’s deep.” The gravel in his whisper ratchets up your tension by about half. “you like it?” His wide-spraddled legs are shimmying with tension again already. The crease between his sockets deepens, and magic beads up on his skull as he lets it fall forward. You can hear it rasping softly against the pushed-up joint of his shoulder where he’s braced on one hand, the other working furiously between his smooth white legs.

“Yeah,” you reply fervently. Your hands on his pelvis are now merely guiding him within the parameters of what pleasures you the most, corralling his increasingly energetic movements.

“...yeah,” Sans echoes vaguely, “jus’ like that,” despite him pretty much running the show at this point.

You grin in anticipation. Just because he can’t form coherent statements anymore doesn’t mean he’s actually going to shut up.

“thass right,” he pants, riding you like it’s going out of style. “’m gonna….wantcha to…ohhh, _fuck?_” You laugh breathlessly when it turns into a question at the end. He makes one or two of those short little noises, bowed skull wobbling as the movements of his pelvis go jerky and uneven.

“goin’ again,” he grunts, and you grip him more firmly to fuck him through it. His head lurches back up, sockets opening with a gasp as the points inside flicker with texture, trying to coalesce vainly before they snap shut again. He lets out a shuddering coo as it hits him hard, his weight-bearing elbow buckling for a moment before he catches himself.

“oh, oh god,’” he says high and surprised, “i can’t-” He cuts himself off with another thready noise. He lifts his chin to expose his delicate vertebrae, and you’re struck by how beautiful he is once more. Iridescent face soft with awe, his soft-keened amazement that he can feel this good. He hiccups when a faint mist of spent magic comes up all at once, cyan-yellow gilding the ivory lattice of his ribs like opal in the sun as he clacks softly deep inside. His rhythm evens back out after that, and you moan as it hits rock-steady.

His sockets open again after a minute, wavering points inside focusing on your face. He lets out a long, shaky sigh of satisfaction before finally taking his hand away from his genitalia and rasping that radius along his forehead sheepishly.

“might wanna hold my hands,” he says low and breathless, still fucking himself on you with an unusual amount of energy. “’pparently this one gets me distracted real easy.”

You make a pleased little hum and take his fingers into yours, pull him forward until he’s propped up on his elbows to either side of you.

“Like this? So you can watch my face when I come for you?” you pant softly, and a wave of naked, vulnerable want glides across his face. His magic sheds again on his frontal bone, and he goes back and forth hard like you’d showed him before. You toy with the tiny, individual bones of his wrists; you do that a lot when you’re topping, enough he shivers and grins if you do it when you’re _not_ having sex. He leans in even further until you can feel his chalky, heated breath puffing from his nasal cavity to cool the sweat on your upper lip.

“_yeah_,” he growls, a throaty rumble heavy with promise as he speeds up again. “’m gonna-”

Sans’s eye lights go out.

A ring of cyan-then-yellow flashes in his left socket; his arm breaks your loose hold easily to make an abrupt, jerky motion. You don’t even have time to gasp before he does a complex full-body movement that results in you no longer touching him. He instantly takes a shortcut, unraveling before you have a chance to shut your eyes and freaking you out real good. You yelp and scramble up; the toy’s disappeared with him, and-

Oh.

That’s _Red_ pinned to the wall of your bedroom, surrounded by Sans’s bone constructs in a spiral so complicated there’s no way he could move anything but his eyes without touching one of them. Sans is standing in front of him with his skull tilted, one of his short legs cocked out as he yanks the toy out of himself thoughtfully.

“i get that you think we’re all real soft here,” Sans says conversationally, “but, uh. if you wanted to get the jump on me you shoulda done it _before_ i knew you existed.”

His sockets are flat on the bottom, his smile long and lazy.

He winks. “jus’ sayin.”

His wrist snaps forward; he throws the toy at the wall a foot or two to the left of Red, hard enough to spritz a few droplets as it wobbles on the rebound, then flops to the floor. Red’s nasal cavity twitches, then changes shape in a way you’ve only seen happen to Sans when something unbearably scientific happens in his vicinity. He makes a low, purring hum and leers at Sans’s pelvis, sniffs audibly as he ogles its glistening-shadowed interior.

“…oh, _sweet_heart. my cunt use ta be a sweet lil peach too, ya know,” he growls lasciviously, grin sharper than glass. His sockets change shape to affected sorrow. “now s’always that time a the month.” Dark red magic seethes across his cheekbones demonstratively as he lets out a mean, rasping chuckle.

“that sounds like the pits,” Sans says calmly.

“eh. haven’t had any complaints,” Red gloats. He says something else you miss because you’re wrapping one of the blankets around your body. Sans might seem pretty comfy nude in front of his duplicate who presumably looks much the same without clothes on, but the same doesn’t apply to you.

“y’know, you got four more hp than me to play with.” Sans’s grin is mellow and friendly, the tone of his voice positively droll. His sockets drift even closer to shut; he looks like he’s ready to fall asleep playing shuffleboard and blame it on the Bossa Nova.

You haven’t seen him this angry in quite a while. Wow.

A bone construct appears in his hand that’s pointed on one end instead of blunt, and he starts picking his flat, blocky teeth with it.

“might not have my brother’s control, but with that kinda leeway don’t think i’ll need it.”

Red’s sneer gets even more smug.

“oh noooo….” It’s a depraved pant; his magic makes another appearance at the surface of his skull. You think it might actually be shedding a little bit. “anything but that, _daddy_.”

Sans’s facial expression doesn’t shift a bit even as his fingers twitch; one of the constructs surrounding Red dips down and bonks him on the head. Red grunts pornographically and shivers as the points in his sockets shrink to bloody pinpricks; something shocking-red coughs out through the cracks in his shattered grin. Brighter than his purplish magic. You’ve seen this before.

Red coughs again, shaking hard enough to brush another construct and repeat the entire process. He grunts louder this time; Sans’s hand moves curtly near his hip and the constructs move outward. His socket flashes. Red drops to the floor ass first with a clacking thud, where he’s quickly surrounded again.

“forgot how much of a wallop that packs,” he croaks, shuddering weakly. “jus’ wanna talk.” Red eye lights flick at you dismissively. “…_alone_.”

“you wanted that, maybe you shoulda waited til i _was_ alone,” Sans grits out.

“you ain’t _ever_ alone, sansy.” The points in his sockets flare bright enough to match the spatter on his face. “not if you c’n help it. and i think we both know why.”

Sans freezes.

“i’m tryin’ ta find out why _you_ don’t _remember_.”

“stop,” Sans croaks. His eye lights disappear again. Nothing else takes their place.

Of course Red surges up the second the constructs fail and blink-dodge-rushes at Sans; you flinch back painfully, but Sans already has the sharpened bone poised backhand between two of Red’s cervical vertebrae by the time you register movement. Carmine eyes flicker and shrink. Sans’s motionless, unscarred ulna and radius block your view of Red’s mouth, but it’s probably as surprised as the rest of him.

“killing’s almost as easy as dying.” Sans is perfectly still, sockets yawning blankly as that mellow rumble emerges from his skull. The wave of not-okay rolling off him is strong enough that you can feel it over near the head of the bed. “when’re you gonna figure out it’s harder _not_ to do either?”

Red starts to say something; you don’t notice any movement but Red cuts himself off with an audible gasp.

“killing makes you _sloppy_,” Sans adds, taking a step forward that Red is forced to echo, backpedaling carefully. The flattened corners of San’s mouth slowly fade back up into a friendly grin, which is actually _fucking terrifying_ with the blank sockets. It takes more time than it should.

“an’ if you wanted to get sloppy with _me…_you shoulda bought me dinner first.”

You taste cold metal in your mouth when another wave of not-okay hits you… no, not a wave this time. An invisible, intangible maelstrom of ice scouring the room nonstop. Red _is_ shedding across his frontal bone; you look at Sans’s blank sockets over that blithe, frozen grin. That’s when you realize Sans is not exactly in control of himself right now. It get worse when you realize Red is about to _say_ something.

“Do you think you could both stop _not_ trying to kill each other and just do whatever the fuck he’s here to do?” you interrupt, getting <strike>(extremely freaked out</strike>) annoyed. “All this posturing’s making my dick soft.”

After a breathless moment or two, Sans’s eye lights waver reluctantly back into existence; he even uses them to glance down at the toy on the floor. Its puddly cling particles seem less than happy with its recent treatment. He huffs, then quickly darts a sheepish look at you.

“sorry, darlin’,” he says quietly. “i can fix it.” His expression hardens as his gaze falls back on Red. “once i get rid a the other limp dick in our bedroom.”

You sigh explosively, wipe sweat out of your eyebrow with a thumb. “Okay. That was _way_ too funny to put in your show, and I’d be laughing if it wasn’t for the fact that I didn’t even get to _come yet_,” you gripe, scowling at Red. He barks a short, hysterical laugh, and the look in his eyes as you meet them for a long moment is incredibly surprised for some reason. Maybe it’s the fact that both you and he realize Sans was 70-30 legit about to dust him right in front of you, but Sans...doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo.

All at once, Red just backs away from the construct at his throat like it stopped existing, plops his clackity ass down on the floor, bows his head and yukks it up shamelessly.

“y’know…i c’n see why you like ‘em,” he huffs to Sans, wiping his face with his puffy jacket sleeve and mostly just smearing the mess around. “they really got their priorities in order.”

“Which is why I _don’t_ like you,” you lie, then just huddle and try to be quiet while the Sanses sort their shit out.

“gotta say…don’t see why you’re this pissed,” Red says slowly, then has better luck wiping his face with the cottony neck of his shirt instead. “i waited til you-”

“shut the fuck up,” Sans interrupts mildly.

He doesn’t.

You narrow your eyes at both of them, watch them read each other like books and talk a bunch of shit without really saying anything. Hmmm. You can catch some of it at least; the soul bond helps, as does years of knowing Sans. Earlier you’d been sharing souls, and the pleasure of it had made Sans’s genitalia come out. You’d both been in the mood, and so you’d decided to do some human style sex afterwards. Now, unexpected hijinks are ensuing. You’re not really a fan.

Red’s using the technicality of non-soul-related sexual activity being culturally perceived as ‘less intimate’ to excuse doing something he knows would bother Sans, but he really _didn’t_ expect him to be angry enough to bloody him over it. (<strike>Or do whatever Sans had been about to do.</strike>)

You look at Sans with narrowed eyes. Hmm. His anger’s not entirely on his own behalf; he expected as much from...himself, you suppose. He’s also angry because Red violated _your_ privacy.

“Oh, are we roleplaying ‘My Hero’?” you interrupt with bland force. “Turns out I’m not really kinking on it as much as you might have hoped.” You glare at Red. “I don’t know about you, but around here we _ask_ first.”

Carmine eyes flare with unexpected outrage.

“...that so.” It’s a dangerous whisper dredged up from who knows where, considering he’s on the floor and looks beaten half to death already. “well. i’d say i was raised in a barn, but i think we all know it was a lab.” Sans freezes, and that deadly tension ices the atmosphere again. Red’s voice is barely there, but it slices through everything as if his teeth are as razor-sharp as they look. “not a lot of askin’ first there, either.”

Shit. _Shit_. You’d suspected, and desperately hoped wasn’t true. But something in you knew, something about how Red talked, the way he acted. Sans retches, doesn’t hear himself. Red’s expression breaks when he sees Sans can’t hear himself, twists into something...uh oh. This needs to stop immediately.

You shimmy painfully to the edge of the bed and sit on it like a human person. The Sanses seem perturbed by your approach, but you’re giving less and less of a crap as the seconds tick by. Sans isn’t okay (and neither are you), and this needs to be dealt with. Red couldn’t have known a threat showing up while Sans was having sex with a human, even if it’s you, would cause all sorts of trainwrecks in Sans’s psyche...but he should have _really_ known better than to bring up the abuse. You eyeball Red frankly, then make a decision before this goes any more sideways than it already has.

You know all sorts of things you also don’t know. If you start talking, you’ll probably figure out what they are. Time to cut through the bullshit, because you need to know _why_ Red’s doing this, and you need to know _now_.

Before he says something careless that breaks Sans the rest of the way.

“Sans doesn’t remember the sexual abuse because Papyrus gave them both quickie lobotomies when he was still a toddler.”

You ignore the chagrin they’re both staring at you with and plow on. “It was part of the pact they made after they neutralized the person who did it, who they _also don’t remember_,” you stress, “since they couldn’t live with the memory of what they survived. They still can’t, so a while back I remembered it _for_ them. If you were less of a conscientious voyeur you might’ve seen that already, but here we are.”

Red can see your face. You know and don’t-know his soul. Just like you know and don’t-know what a Level of Violence is.

“Anyhow, I _know_ something similar happened to you because I can feel it through the bond Sans and I invented at some point to preserve our connection through timelines or RESETS or whatever the fuck, since it turns out it _did_ carry over…or at least it did once you _got_ here.”

You see a flicker in Red’s sockets.

“Just like you started _aging_ when you got here,” you add mercilessly, leaning forward into the sweet smell of paydirt. “Congratulations on your new child, _grand_child and _soulmate_, by the way. Don’t get me wrong, it fucks me up that it happened to you too, but what I don’t get is why _Edge_ didn’t-”

“**stop**,” Red croaks, the red points in his sockets flickering out. He coughs again, but nothing comes out. “fuckin’…shit. o-okay.”

“I’ll stop when you agree not to tell Sans anything that can hurt him.” You hope he can still see your expression without his eyes, because you mean every word. “You can hurt us, we can hurt you back. We all proved it. Now how about you just tell us why you’re here instead?”

“okay,” he rasps hollowly, covering his face with rustling sleeves. “you don’t gotta drag pa—my bro inta this.”

Your eyes flick towards Sans, and you hunch in on yourself at the disturbed expression on his face. Apparently you’re learning that neither of you is particularly defenseless, despite being intimately familiar with each others’ vulnerabilities.

Seeing a whole new side of each other today. Yeesh.

You blush at each other for a second, then simultaneously turn your attention back to dealing with your unexpected third wheel.  
“_**Talk**_,” you say, slow and clear. He shivers all over, and when he pulls his sleeves away from his face, his eye lights have reluctantly returned to existence. He huffs when your expression doesn’t change.

“you started fuckin’ bout an hour ago, right?” he growls.

Silence greets him, and you both stare. You had, of course. But the weird thing is, he’s not mocking or baiting you. He really wants to know.

“_right_?” he pants, sockets narrowing.

Sans makes a short, disgusted noise, but you lift your hand. Red really wants to know, because he _doesn’t_ know. You can extrapolate from there that he hadn’t actually _looked_, in the sense that Sans can. Tertiary vision or whatever. He’d been made aware some other way.

Been _made_ aware.

Oh. Uh oh.

You decide to check on something real quick.

“_That’s what you feel like to me,” you whisper shakily, then grab his bone fingers and pull them to your lips. “What we did. The promise,” you whisper into his hand, then close your fingers around to make it a fist, to hold your words tight inside flesh and bone like a secret in the slowly warming, inky-soft darkness._

“_You’re like my hand in the dark, like everything I am inside can __see__ you even when my eyes can’t. I feel it in my soul, no matter where you are.”_

You hear a vague rumble; Sans and Sans are talking again. You’re unfocused, being two places at once.

“Shh,” you say, “give me a minute.” It stops.

_You spend a lot of time with Lola, who lets you know that not only are Sans and Grillby having a truly remarkable amount of sex, but that once again you’re welcome to join them._

_You already know that, because there’s a part of you that can…um. You can trace the shape of it inside you; it’s kind of distracting when you think about it. And it’s hard not to when you can hear the unintelligible timbre of his plaintive rambling, the need in his breathy taunts, the profound satisfaction in his soft cries all the way out here in the main room between songs. None of the monsters act like they hear anything… and maybe they can’t. Maybe you’re not...hearing. You consider asking Lola if she can, then remember she can always hear everything. You shift and blush, have another drink._

_February is cold, but in Grillby’s it is very, very warm. Occasionally downright… sweltering._

_(hot and rough)_

“You can feel it,” you say slow and wondering after a good several minutes of ‘real quick’. “It’s _bothering_ you.”

Red huffs enigmatically, but doesn’t answer. You look at Sans, whose expression should be framed for posterity.

“It’s like when you were at Grillby’s that whole month,” you say a little garbled, and “and I went under the table with Lola cause it, uh. Made me...” You clear your throat; Red looks aghast. “I could feel it, kind of,” you say, and then look at Sans.

“you…? but humans can’t feel-”

“Not souls,” you interrupt. “I mean, I know if _you’__re_ sharing your soul or not, but I think this might be…a bodies thing?”

His expression is still one that can go in some unfortunate directions. “Sans. He’s being subjected to sexual experiences he can’t control and _didn’t ask for_,” you explain uncomfortably. “He’s not the one who started it, he’s just… He was acting like that because he thought we _knew_.”

Almost certainly thought you had been doing it to him on purpose, too. It’d explain his behavior, and why he came in here ready for a fight. He probably has his own reasons for expecting the worst, _preparing_ for the worst. None of you say anything about that part. You don’t really need to.

“You’d think he was doing it on purpose too, Sans,” you add gently anyway, just to make sure. He knows that, but he doesn’t like having it pointed out.

Oh, well. Guess it sucks to be everyone in this room right now.

“can you feel...him?” Sans asks slowly.

“I don’t know,” you answer honestly. “But I kind of know things about him, and I think...he does about me, too.”

“what…the fuck did you _do_?” Red asks Sans slowly.

“Actually, it was me,” you correct gently; crimson points skewer you despite your placating tone. “At least it was this go around. Basically, me and Sans made a promise to each other at some point, got our souls involved, and we’re too irresponsible and lazy to actually sit down with Alphys so she can figure _out_ what exactly the fuck we did. But I’m the one who, um. Activated? It. This time. And Sans just made the other half...do the thing? In response.”

“you’re sayin’ you did something to my…his…_soul_. ya don’ know what it is, or who started it,” Red says flatly. “or why. or when.”

“Not really, no,” you admit. “But I’m not sorry we did. And to be fair to us, we had no reason to suspect you physically being here was a thing that was possible.” You purse your lips. “I mean...it’s _supposed_ to last across timelines, but only…if we’re both present.” You sigh. “I don’t know what happens when one of us isn’t, or if there’s more than one.”

“fer fucks _sakes_,” he whispers, looking moderately horrified.

You shrug. “I mean. I _am_ with Sans. And he’s _you_, so….you probably should have figured we’d just go with it and worry about the nuts and bolts later. Or, you know.” You’re immune to his flat, disbelieving expression. “Never.”

Something else occurs to you.

“It might not be _me_ you’re feeling, though. I mean, you’re different enough not to do the annihilation thing, but you’re still both the same person.” You look at Sans. “Did you feel weird at all the day those kids came to Grillby’s?”

“dunno,” he says after a minute. “i was with paps.”

“You?”

Red shrugs. “fell asleep cause i was soused, remember?”

You blow a raspberry. “So, no way to know yet if it’s me or you he’s feeling,” you say to Sans. “Or both, I guess.”

Sans is rasping the backs of his curled phalanges under his chin, staring down at Red. His pelvis is bare, his erstwhile genitalia having long since returned to the crux of his pubic bones, sacroiliac joints, or perhaps his sacral hiatus. (Then there’s the soft thing that emerges from his sacral foramina to coat the bone there like a tongue; even Alphys doesn’t know what that is. He can’t come with it, but petting there can make him wiggle and hum for hours.) You’re not sure which dense little crevice this one emerges from, and you didn’t notice which one it crept back to.

Oh. Sans is looking at you now, something expectant hovering around his sockets.

“What?”

“you got an idea?”

“Why do you think I have an idea?” You’d literally just been thinking about his downstairs business, and wondering idly if Red can make the tongue thing too. It’s nice to know your bonefriend still thinks the best of you, though.

“cause you got that face like you have an idea.”

And apparently doesn’t _always_ know what you’re thinking by looking at your face. (You swallow guilt; Sans must be at least as rattled as you are to get it that wrong.)

“are you two always like this?” Red interjects peevishly.

“heh. what’s eatin’ you?” Sans says like it’s a play on words. “got the dee tees?”

Red looks irked like it is. “bite a curb, dickshit.”

“Ok, _fine_, I have an idea,” you say finally, just to stop whatever the hell this is once again. “How about I’ll message you if we’re going to fuck?”

“wow.” Red looks impressed, and not in a good way. “that’s your idea of a solution, huh? gimme time to get to a fuckin’ bomb shelter before my crotch goes off?”

“Yep,” you answer with a quirked eyebrow, “and I was also going to _try_ to not include you. And tell Sans to not include you.”

They’re quiet.

“You know? Intent and all that? Like maybe now we actually _know_ it’s happening, we can make it so it doesn’t happen.”

They stare at you, which is understandable. It’s a pretty weaksauce idea, but it’s all you’ve got at such short notice. You take a deep breath to explain again, but Red interrupts.

“might work, yeah.”

Sans nods, still giving Red a dirty look. “he’ll probably still know.”

“I mean, we don’t actually fuck that often,” you muse. “It just seems like it.”

Red tilts his skull at you.

“All of this is stressing us out,” you say, and Sans looks annoyed you’re giving information away for free. “And that’s how we deal with stress.”

You look at Red instead of Sans. Hmmm….

“I bet that’s how _you_ deal with stress, too.” You do your impression of Sans’s telling-the-truth wink. “Feeling pretty punchy by now, huh? Nobody around here likes your fashion sense?”

Red disappears, and you slam your eyes shut too late.

Ugh. Seeing that is still like watching reality implode. It’s worse now that there’re two of them; you have to forcibly stop yourself from wondering what would happen if they decided to be in the same place at the same time. You shudder deeply, then open your eyes to see Sans staring at you like you just grew a second evil head.

“who the fuck _are_ you?” he says in wonder, then starts shaking with mirth. Silent at first, then he takes a deep breath and launches himself at you, wrestling you prone on the bed (very carefully, considering your hips) as the guffaws take him.

“Don’t you dare chip my teeth,” you giggle despite yourself, wriggling in a mock attempt at getting away. “I’ll leave you for Red if you make us match.”

“nah,” he chuckles, the deep rumble of it vibrating against you deliciously. “last thing i want’s to make that pretty mouth seem’s dangerous as it actually _is_,” he adds. “where’s the fun in that?”

“It’s in my pants,” you huff. “Speaking of which, where did they end up?”

“don’t want me to make good?” he asks a little sadly, but you shake your head.

“My boner’s permadead after that,” you remind Sans blandly. “I’m gonna go get drunk. Interested?”

“when am i not?” he grins, then takes a mostly-clean pair of your pants out of his phone, which was apparently closer to him than your pants from earlier.

“Holy _shit_, you’re lazy.” You lick his forehead to make him squawk in surprise. “I fuckin’ _love _you so _much_.” You set a foot up on a blanket mound with a wince and try vaguely to lasso it into the pants without sitting up or putting on underwear.

“love you too.” You open your mouth as he pokes at your lips with blunt-pointy fingertips, two pills poised carefully between them. You capitulate easily, swallowing them dry. You wince as they bruise your esophagus; that’s what you get for doing this lying down.

You sigh, then grunt in defeat as the pants fly out of your hand on your next attempt.

“Will _you_ just put my pants on?” you whine. Sans grins at you fondly, then flinches sympathetically when you try and lean up, eternally impatient, to retrieve them yourself. He looks crestfallen, then gets a sly look around the sockets.

“hey. now _i_ jus’ got an idea.”

He pulls a pair of his own shorts and that ribcage-print shirt out of his phone. You don’t know what he’s up to until he adds a spare hoodie and a pair of his slippers to the collection. You draw in a long, delighted breath as he waggles a pair of his extra-fancy, extra-lacy bobby socks at you.

“Yesssssss,” you whisper dramatically, then point your foot at him with a little wince.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much as chapter 3 had the working title ‘red fucks a toilet’, this chapter’s working title was ‘sans throws a dildo.’
> 
> So now we have established that Sans and Red are both acting very weird, and there’s the first glimpse of mayyybe why.
> 
> I’ve always just assumed the theme of Undertale is how we all are responsible as individuals for stopping the cycle of abuse, no matter what point we are at in it.
> 
> It’s a metaphor, even. After all, the very first thing that happens when you play is someone lies to you and then hurts you, deliberately and badly. And then he mocks you for having been hurt, despite having just been ‘born’.
> 
> This purposely undermines your willingness to trust by the time you meet Toriel, and casts her behavior in a much different light than if she had been the first person you’d met.
> 
> I’m talking about Flowey, of course, an abused child who was initially goaded to do harm by another abused child, Chara. It’s a chain of abuse going back into the unknowable mystery of the past, and yet we’re responsible for ending it. And ending it doesn’t mean NOT fighting, as we learn eventually...but you have to face the truth before you can get there.
> 
> Papyrus and Edge are acting weird, too...even for *them*.
> 
> I want to reiterate that this story’s gonna have some fairly intense shit. Some parts are going to have summaries as alternatives to actually reading them, but not all. There’s going to be strong violence and some sexual violence themes happening. Sans and Papyrus are the result of severely abused people taken in by an imperfect, but supportive and loving community. Red and Edge are the result of...not that.
> 
> They are still responsible for stopping the cycle of abuse.
> 
> Now. Since I am dead fucking serious about not wanting anyone to feel like they “have” to read this, I’ll let you know I started a slice of life sidefic for this work about Reader and Sans, because I felt like I wasn’t able to focus on their relationship in this as much as I personally wanted to! It’s gonna be mainly sex, child care, dates, recipes/cooking, and bad comedy.
> 
> It’s here:
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/22075885


	12. THE DEAL

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “If my life wasn’t funny, it would just be true. And that’s really unacceptable.”  
\--Carrie Fisher
> 
> Frank Black – Every Time I Go Around Here  
https://youtu.be/n5CJg4kZtnM

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **[moderate temporal discomfort; drunkery and such]**

An hour later, you’re moderately shithammered and playing a game involving convincing Sans to come sit in your lap instead of being dandled on Grillby’s knee. Well, he’s mostly dandling himself, but Grillby’s on board. Doing a good job so far of not scorching your dress, either.

“darlin’, you _know_ you’ll feel it later, even if ya don’t now.”

“Yeah, but I don’t _care_,” you whine.

Sans isn’t wearing anything under the dress, and he’s making sure everyone knows it. The crowd’s all regulars tonight, and they’re used to Sans’s bullshit. Well. More like utterly inured, to Sans’s possible annoyance. He’s good at hiding that annoyance, but not from Grillby who is allowing the dandling and pretending he doesn’t know about the pelvis show quite tolerantly. Probably _since_ it’s all regulars, who can all be trusted to just go retrieve their usuals and leave the money on the bar while Grillby happily dandles his currently high-maintenance bonefriend.

“Can I just tell him what happened?” you say quietly under the music. Sans immediately gets a peevish-guilty look on his face, and Grillby has to catch him in the crook of his arm to keep Sans’s silky skeleton butt from sliding right off his lap. And to do so without burning your dress.

…_It’s fine_, he crackles evenly. _…Especially if it’s none of my business._

Something about that makes Sans’s face fall. He looks downright haunted for a minute, then slides off Grillby’s lap with a little huff and saunter-shuffles toward the bar on skittery, bare skeleton feet. It’s hard not to just let your eyes follow him, but you want to have a quick word with Grillby if possible.

“He wants you, but he doesn’t want to be apart from me for some reason,” you sign quickly. “But I don’t want to-”

…_I know_, Grillby says, warm words like a blanket over your discomfiture. He glances at Sans, who’s finally made it behind the bar and appears to be mixing a rather complex cocktail at a snail’s pace. Then he gets the bright idea to crawl onto the bar to mix it, necessitating a very revealing journey be repeated multiple times from the shelves where the bottles are kept to the countertop. Redbird takes a peek, giggles to herself, then downs her glass and taps it, trying to see if Sans will fill it for her. Grillby sighs, but doesn’t stop him. You’ve got a feeling it’s more about the unsterilized skeleton on his forbidden countertop than anything he’s doing on it.

…_He wants to decide when people can see him there_, Grillby says, still quiet. _…And when they can’t. __Which means that someone saw something Sans wishes they did not. And there’s really only one person who has the ability to catch Sans by surprise to that degree…_

“Himself,” you gesture, and Grillby flicker-nods.

…_It’s not difficult to figure out what I need to know of what happened from the way Sans… processes it. __It’s his way of telling me._

Your mouth hangs open; you shut it with a faint click. Oh. You know what happened had bothered Sans a lot, but you hadn’t quite picked up on the fact that Red seeing him naked (and having sex, you suppose) had bothered him as much as it had. Especially since he hadn’t moved to dress himself; he’d even stayed standing while Red was sitting, giving him a better view than he might’ve had other...wise. Ohhh.

He’s been making Red uncomfortable in the same way by staying naked, and played it off by acting like it didn’t bother him. Really shoving his face in it. Almost literally, a few times.

Because Grillby’s right on the money. You see it now, watching Sans bending over in your dress to show the bar his tailbone as he takes the invitation and refills Redbird’s glass.

A wave of strange guilt arrives, with a dart of chagrin at talking about Sans like he’s a puzzle to figure out, or his ways of dealing with things is transparent, or-

…_He knows I know_, Grillby says, interrupting the spiraling thoughts that must have been apparent. _…And I know because he wants me to._ He tilts his head at you. _…Ah. You want to talk about it, and Sans…_

He lets a small, sad smile flickers across his flames. His voice sounds go so quiet, you can definitely only understand because of the soul-thing monsters do. _…It’s likely he will ask me to touch him, and then I will also know. __Speaking of it makes him feel vulnerable, and so he would rather become vulnerable first._

“Does everyone know?”

…_This is a place where people can do what they need to in a safe environment…._ Grillby answers around your question, watching Sans fondly. …_No one will think badly of Sans for what he is doing. _

“He’s been acting weird,” you say quietly. “Papyrus too.”

_...I agree, but...how so?_

“Angry,” you half-whisper. “Like..._scary_-angry. They want to kill them. Sans almost did.”

Grillby sighs heavily. _….That is… __very __disturbing to hear._

“Yep.”

He shakes his head. _...But what about you? Are **you** okay? Were you hurt?_

“No,” you truth-lie blandly. You’re not okay, and you don’t know if what happened counts as being hurt. You think about saying that you were the one doing the hurting, but you decide not to. Because you’re the one who feels embarrassed and exposed, even though you’re fully dressed.

You look back at the bar, see that Sans is filling glasses for everyone now. Craig toasts him, then waits to have a second filled. Then Craig slurms off his barstool and brings the brimming tumbler to Lola.

..._I am happy to listen, but I don’t think it’s me you want to be talking to right now._

“Well.” Your face is hot, and your lip wiggles a minute before you suck them in and bite them to make them behave. No public crying today. Nope. “He doesn’t want to, obviously.”

…_.I meant Papyrus, actually. You’re in pain, and confused, and you haven’t spent much time with him lately. He misses you._

Oh. He’s right, so you nod reluctantly. That is actually…exactly who you want to be with right now. Especially if Sans wants to stay with Grillby. You glance over in time to see your saucy skeleton leaning over with his entire ass out. Oh, look. A subject change.

“Is that outfit...more provocative than what he usually wears?” What Sans usually wears of course being what you have on right now. The ribcage-print shirt, shorts, hoodie….and you have to admit the fancy socks make you feel _awfully_ pretty. There are little bits of something shiny embedded in the lace trim to make them sparkle, and the slippers are barely dirty. He’d really given you his best.

Grillby laughs, but it’s almost...nervous? He’s quite purple at the edges.

…_In a different way. __It’s… I’m very. Flattered_, Grillby wheezes out.

You frown. “Everyone knows he’s here for you.” Grillby’s silence and paleness, as well as his averted gaze, kind of confirms that. “What, is he showing them what they can’t have or something?”

Despite the fact that Grillby flickers a quick but adamant negative, it’s obvious he can’t quite bring himself to explain what this actually is. He does the you thing and changes the subject again.

…_.__I have to say, you fill out Sans’s clothes quite nicely…. _Grillby grins. _...Get it? ...It's because you have meat._

“You know,” you say seriously, frowning into your drink, “I’m starting to think you’re sweet on me.”

Grillby grins in pale delight, looks away and then back. ..._And here I imagined I was being so subtle._

“No way. You’ve got it bad.”

You wink, but Grillby goes soft all over.

…_No. __N__o…I think I’ve got it __**good**_,” he crackle-whispers, sincere enough to make your chest twinge with a tart-sweet longing. …_Better than I imagined would be possible __for someone like me__._

“Grillby,” you say, a light admonishment in your voice. “You’re a good person.”

_...__No._ That soft, strange smile stays, even as he disagrees. _...I am __**here**__ for a reason. But I will never stop __**trying**__ to be, and it turns out that counts for something. _His not-eyes go unfocused and vague. _….More than I used to think, before I met Sans._

“heya, good-lookin’,” rumbles right in your ear, and you jump. Oh. Grillby wasn’t unfocused, he was looking _behind_ you. Sans skitters around to the side, an apologetic grin on his face already. He plops a full glass down, spilling a little. You catch the scent of cherries and acceptance.

“It’s fine,” you smile, shaking your head. “So, um. I was thinking. Maybe you could stay…and I could see if Papyrus needs some company?”

Sans stares for about two seconds because he’s pretty drunk, then his expression turns gentle. “you sure, darlin’? don’t wanna-”

“Yes,” you say quickly. He huffs, a little abashed. You reach out, and he gives you his hand. You bring it up to your lips, hold his gaze, and give it a soft little kiss. He giggles shyly, iridescence creeping over his face. You stand, blow Grillby a kiss, and walk your tipsy skeleton lover toward the fire door and into his space that’s basically just for this.

The kitchen’s dimmer than you’d expect, and the little corner for Sans’s shortcuts feels like after hours. You shut your eyes, and when you open them you and Sans are in the kitchen of the skeleton household. Well, their skeleton household. Almost forgot there’re _two_ of those now.

“Wait a sec,” you say, holding on to his wrist for a lingering moment, even though he doesn't show signs of departing yet. You pull him close for a little kiss and a whisper. “I want my dress back without any burn holes.”

Sans shivers as your breath puffs down into the neckline, lets one of his sockets close slyly. “mmm… can’t make any promises for grillbz. you know how he gets.”

You do. You also know how _Sans_ gets.

“I’m holding you responsible.”

“…that so.”

Sans steps back with an egregiously casual expression, then just pulls the dress off over his head and stands there in his bare bones, holding the wrinkly bundle of cloth out to you.

You laugh. “Wow, seriously?” He just grins and winks, which makes you a little nervous. “Is…he waiting for you in his room?”

“nope.” So he’s just going to saunter around Grillby’s naked, grab the flame man and haul him to the back in front of everyone.

You try to find the kindest tone of voice you currently have at your disposal. “That’s a bit much even for you, Sans.”

Yikes. Well, you tried.

“if ug can get away with it every gyftmas, no reason i...” He trails off at your frown.

“I just thought… it might embarrass _Grillby_,” you point out gently. Second time’s the charm. His face falls because you’re right. So you step up, take the bundle from him, toss it to the floor (and step on it) so he knows you don’t actually care about a stupid dress. Then you give him a big old hug, rubbing his shoulderblade bracingly with the inside of your wrist. Just the way he likes it, and his fingers come up and do the little circle in the middle of your back.

“It’s okay, Sans. You have _me_ to be the voice of reason.” He sighs, melts into your embrace and pushes his face into you. You reach up and cup his skull, press with your fingers just how he likes. You’ll use all the tricks from your playbook if you need to. “Although I _am_ a bit surprised this hasn’t come up before.”

“’m cranky,” he admits tightly instead of addressing that. You rub your cheek on his skull, because so are you and it’s kind of understandable. Sans isn’t actually the walking-around-naked type. He’d probably end up regretting it, cause a mild to moderate shitshow, and end up under the table with Lola.

Not that Grillby’s isn’t the place for all that, but you’ve both already had enough drama for today.

Then of course Papyrus comes around the corner and finds your drunk ass hugging his naked brother in the middle of his kitchen. Yep, there goes the gloved finger rubbing between the sockets. You wish you weren’t so familiar with the muffled zip-zip sound of that cloth-covered, nubbly phalanx.

“sorry, bro,” Sans mumbles into your shoulder. You just kind of shrug at Papyrus once he opens his sockets again with a sigh. He immediately starts pulling a complete set of Sans’s clothing out of his phone.

“IT’S… FINE, BROTHER. I’LL PRETEND YOU DIDN’T BREAK THE ~_ALWAYS __PANTS__ IN THE KITCHEN~_ RULE THIS ONCE. ON ACCOUNT OF A LITTLE BIRD HAS INFORMED ME YOU’RE _CRANKY_,” he adds with an angled-socket eyeroll. Sans takes the clothes in one hand without looking, gives you another squeeze before pulling back to put them on. A pair of lavender slippers hit the ground next to him with a soft pap-pap noise. “WE’RE ALL HAVING DIFFICULTIES…ADJUSTING.” Papyrus narrows his sockets at you. “EVEN THE VOICE OF REASON.”

“Shut up,” you mumble, blushing hotly, then immediately continue, “…sorry.”

“they ain’t doing so hot, paps,” Sans sighs, clacking his bare skeleton butt down on the floor to put his socks and slippers on. _Before_ his shorts, and _after_ the hoodie. God, you love him. “’m headin’ back, though.”

He stops for a second, cranes his neck back to look up at his brother, who’s giving you a concerned look. It makes you blush even harder because you regret telling him to shut up. That was mean.

“you up for some comp’ny?”

“OF COURSE!” Papyrus always puts so much enthusiasm into everything, but he actually looks...touched? That you want to hang out with him? You look at him standing there smiling, all stoked to hell you wanted to come over to his house and tell him to shut up before you even said hi.

“Sorry,” you mutter again, voice tight and hoarse. And…yep, there goes your lip again. Being all wiggly. You do the petulant eye-wipe thing before you need to, and that makes it even worse.

Papyrus scoops you up before anything else happens even though you’re a big mean jerk, and you manage to cover your face with your sleeve-wrapped fists _before_ letting a sniffle escape. Might be the first win of the day. For anyone.

It makes sense that you and Sans both have some negative associations with unexpected surprises during sex. Nevertheless, you want to talk about it, he wants to get laid about it, and it turns out those are incompatible at the moment. Neither of you want to be alone about it, but at the moment you’re not doing a very good job of being _together_ about it. Monster style families have an interesting way of catering to different emotional needs because of their structures, so you and Sans don’t have to feel compelled to just stay and make each other miserable. There’s no reason you can’t both get what you need, instead of having no one to turn to but each other and coming up short.

“see ya later, good lookin’. you know where ta find me.”

“In Grillby’s asshole?” you hiccup softly.

“FOR FUCKS SAKE.” It’s a surprisingly toothless objection from Papyrus, but the echo stings a bit anyhow.

“That’s what h-he said,” you hiccup into your sleeves.

“heh…yeah.” Papyrus must have knelt down, since you feel Sans pat at your head fondly. “good one. lemme know if you need me to come up for air, k?”

“Okay,” you whisper-sniffle. “Love you. Don’t forget to s-send a message, just in case.”

He knows you’re not talking about a message to you. And he knows you’re right; you need to figure out how this sexth sense thing works, and if it’s through you, Sans, or both. No better time than the present.

He’s silent for a long few moments. “love you too.”

And he’s gone.

Papyrus sighs, but it’s not one of his exasperated ones. Without further ado, he walks you to the couch in the living room and holds you while you cry out of guilt for telling him to shut up. Even if he was being rude. Papyrus allows this for a reasonable amount of time before interrupting, because friendship is a two-way street.

“DOES GRILLBY EVEN _HAVE_ A BUTT?” Papyrus sounds very perplexed. You uncover your face to look at him.

“Do you...actually want an answer to that?”

“WELL, I _ASKED_, DIDN’T I?”

You laugh, rubbing at your itchy tearstained cheeks. “He can kinda…do an impression of one? I guess Craig taught him how or something.”

Papyrus looks disturbingly thoughtful.

“If you keep making that face I’m probably going to get out of your lap,” you point out.

That finally makes him pink.

“DO YOU WANT TO WATCH A METTATON?” He says it lightly despite his iridescence.

“Can I watch you watch a Mettaton?”

He smiles, shoulders relaxing a bit. You hadn’t realized how tense they were before.

“OF COURSE,” he caws quietly. “I’LL BE SURE TO RESPOND APPROPRIATELY.”

“It’ll be nice to have someone do that today, yeah.” You rest your head against his cloth covered bones, wiggle in a bit so he knows he’s still cuddly and full of calcium.

“IS THE PAIN VERY BAD?” he asks after a few minutes of you listening mindlessly to Mettaton’s chiptunes voice.

“Yeah,” you admit quietly. “I can’t really _feel_ it right now, but I will tomorrow if...” You exhale heavily. If it wasn’t for Papyrus’s contagious aura of health. “Thanks for putting up with me.”

“THE GREAT PAPYRUS WOULD ALWAYS RATHER PUT UP WITH PEOPLE THAN PUT THEM DOWN.”

“You’re a good egg, Papyrus.” He grunts sourly at that, but you have no idea why.

“WHENEVER YOU’RE READY.” He then proceeds to studiously do his duty of watching his shows for a minute or two.

“Me and Sans were having some private time and Red decided to crash it.”

Papyrus tenses all over, pulling you close. “HE DIDN’T-”

“No one got hurt or, um. Actually, Red did, but he left under his own steam. No encounter, but Sans was...dealing with him. It looked like he bled? But skeletons don’t…”

Papyrus tightens again; you squirm reflexively and he eases up right away.

“A lot of stuff’s been bothering him since he got here. Mostly stuff that affects Sans. He’s aging, he’s...” you sigh. “He can...feel what me and Sans did. It might be because of that, or it might...I don’t know why, but he gets like I do sometimes when Sans goes to Grillby’s, and it _bothers_ him. I mean, of _course_ it would bother him, and... he thought we were doing it on _purpose_. That’s why he showed up ready for a fight.”

Papyrus apparently has no trouble parsing your euphemistic babble; he tilts his skull down and looks at you with a combination of horror and compassion that cracks you right in half. You breath catches in your throat, an awkward little hiccup.

“I didn’t _know_,” you whisper shamefaced, so you hide yours against padded bone. “But I still feel like I did something bad.” He doesn’t try to give you any platitudes about it; he can tell that’s not all of it.

“Papyrus,” you sob softly. He just waits. “Red _remembers_.”

“I KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN,” he caws softly, “BUT-”

“I said _mean things_ to him, Papyrus,” you tell Papyrus’s shirt hotly. “I was worried he’d say something _Sans_ doesn’t remember.”

Papyrus just holds you, rubs your arm and watches his shows for quite some time.

“WE’RE ALL HAVING TROUBLE ADJUSTING,” he caws again hoarsely. “AND...PERHAPS MAKING...CHOICES. WE MIGHT NOT OTHERWISE.” He sounds very unhappy about that.

“Are you okay?”

Papyrus huffs almost like Sans. “WHEN AM I NOT?”

Okay, so Papyrus is doing horrible, too. Good to know. You decide not to get buried under an avalanche of guilt over the whole “shut up” incident again, since it’s a placeholder for like six other things.

“Have you thought about what your next painting’s going to be?”

The conversation that follows is very weird and very soothing, and you bless Grillby for being right once again. This is exactly what you needed, and from the look of it… You peer up at the ceaselessly flapping mandible above you. Papyrus is watching Mettaton and telling you all about making life-sized cardboard paper dolls of himself, which is apparently what he does instead of sketching out his fashion designs. Seems like this is exactly what he needed, too. It makes you happy. Actually...come to think of it, it’s been a while since Papyrus has done one of his parties, hasn’t it?

You’re making a mental note to bring it up the next time he pauses long enough, when Papyrus stops talking and gets still. But not like he’s afraid; like he’s _listening_.

His hand pops up with the phalanges spread, and-

“Papyrus! I didn’t know you had a viewer!”

“I HAVE A VIEWER,” Papyrus agrees absently as he accepts an incoming feed. “I WONDER WHO…OH.”

There's music.

_I'm going crazy, I'm losing sleep  
I'm in too far, I'm in way too deep over youuuu…_

Papyrus tilts the display so you can see it too, and it’s the inside of Grillby’s. Whoever’s capturing the feed is way off to the side, and you realize from the angle….it must be _Lola_.

Welp.

Looks like Grillby figured out a way for Sans to create the spectacle he wanted with slightly less pelvis on display. Although to be fair, there’s still like half of Sans’s sacrum visible over the top of his shorts. That’s mostly because Grillby’s arms are around his ribcage along with the bunched up excess of his shirt and sweater, holding him up about a foot off the floor. His feet dangle as Grillby sways him around in an undulating red and orange lighting scheme you’ve never seen there before.

“HIS FORM IS TERRIBLE,” Papyrus caws with soft admiration. “HIS _FEET_ AREN’T EVEN ON THE FLOOR.”

They’re actually at an angle to it, his unfused ankle copying his fused right to keep his slippers on, cocked out and swaying on stiff bone legs, occasionally bopping Grillby in the knees.

_Wherever you go, I'll be with you  
Whatever you want, I'll give it to you_

“Grillby’s cribbing from _my_ playbook,” you whisper, inexplicably delighted. Papyrus narrows his sockets at you, then his teeth part as he peers at the feed. Sans slips down another awkward inch, and Grillby smiles like the sun.

“HAVE I EVER MENTIONED I’M A VERY SKILLED EDITOR OF NOVELS, SCRIPTS, AND PLAYBOOKS?” Papyrus says brightly, as if that had just occurred to him, the shady bitch. You snort and shake your head, grinning from ear to ear. Grillby’s just plodding around in this awkward little circle, then sort of...crouches up and down? To the accompaniment of quite a few whistles and suggestive hollers from the patrons. Oop...yep, Craig threw an empty fry basket, and Sans’s foot twitches out of its path before it can knock his slipper off. Sans’s legs continue to stick out like a dead cow’s, angled straight out from the hips little more sharply to make room for the intermittent crouching of his partner.

As far as bad dancing goes, it’s quite the achievement. You’re not entirely sure it warranted an emergency viewer-feed call, but you’re delighted you’re not missing the show. But when you glance over, Papyrus has a very complicated expression on his face.

“Are they usually better at it?” you ask dubiously.

“AT WHAT?”

“Dancing.”

“NO,” Papyrus answers, face still odd. Getting answers out of him is always like pulling teeth, until it isn’t. Maybe you just don’t ask the right questions.

“Why?” you try.

“BECAUSE THEY HAVEN’T EVER,” Papyrus replies succinctly.

_Whenever you need someone  
To lay your heart and head upon  
Remember, after the fire, after all the rain  
I will be the flame..._

San’s flattened grin is just visible above the scrunched hoodie at his shoulder, arms extended and hands locked up around the back of Grillby’s tall collar, crumpling its starchy stiffness. The side of his skull’s buried in Grillby’s vest, and the expression on his closed-socketed face is somewhere between pained, ecstatic, and...nostalgic? It’s hard to describe; not pure happiness, but something adjacent to it.

You’ve spent a long time trying to understand what Sans and Grillby’s relationship has been over the untold centuries.

It hasn’t occurred to you until now that _their_ relationship has changed since _you_ came into the picture.

Grillby starts to twirl, lurching dangerously. His blissed-out equivalent of a grin doesn’t budge, though, nor does Sans seems to notice the world revolving and tilting as he floats above it. Or maybe he just already feels like that. Turns out they’re making their wince-inducing, circular way to the fire door, and they slam through it clumsily together just as the song reaches its crescendo.

_I will be the flaaaAAAAAame….._

Another empty fry basket, a carton of eggs, some wadded up napkins and a rain of toothpicks hit the closed door like confetti the moment it shuts behind them.

The scene moves, wobbling until the image shows the bar, the lights coming up to a different, cooler scheme. The it flips around and there’s Lola, her eyes half-mast with rings of color around the irises. She winks and laughs as the song fades, and _Living After Midnight_ starts to play just before she cuts off the feed.

Papyrus tucks it away, and you notice that sometime during that he’d rearranged you both so you’re spooning instead of being cradled in his arms.

“Wow,” you muse, Mettaton’s antics catching your eye for a moment. “Are _we_ that bad at dancing?”

“I COULD ARRANGE A CONTEST IF YOU’D LIKE TO FIND OUT,” Papyrus says, “BUT YOU’LL HAVE TO FIND A DIFFERENT JUDGE. I WILL HAVE TO RECUSE MYSELF ON THE GROUNDS OF NO.”

“Just...no?”

“YES,” Papyrus says primly. You can hear the grin in his voice. You take a deep breath, sigh it out and settle in. No blanket, but you don’t want to move. Touching Papyrus is a lot different than touching Sans. He’s certainly not warm, and there’s a certain more-intense quality to the resonance of his magic. No clue if it’s because he’s bigger, has more physicality than his brother, or just because he’s so very extra.

“Papyrus, can I ask you a skeleton bodies question?” His barely-audible huff lets you know where you stand, and his “NNNNYES...” means you can ask all you like, but the answer you get is contingent on what that question is. That’s fair enough, considering what you’d already been talking about, what Sans is about to be doing right now probably, and the degree to which Papyrus is a very private person about that sort of thing.

“I know monsters souls are all one soul. And, um. I know magic is all the same thing, too. But...” Papyrus is very still. “How… aware are monsters of each others’ bodies?”

It feels like about half an hour goes by.

“I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT.”

More or less what you expected. But you hope he respects your due diligence, at least.

“Yet (CONDITIONAL!! UNLESS!!),” he adds, a set of harshly dissonant tones so unexpected you make a weird little grunt of surprise. He hunches as you look up at him, sockets looking unusually blank as he clutches you and shivers. “I’m Not Ready (PAIN(pain) AND FRIENDLY ADVICE PAIN(pain) AND FRIENDLY ADVICE PAIN(pain) AND FRIENDLY ADVICE(pain) AND FRIENDLY ADVICE).”

You clear your throat a few times, blinking hard until your brain stops ringing. He doesn’t apologize for answering your question, as well he shouldn’t.

But he does pull you a little closer, curling up more. You put your arm over his and rub his soft undergarment-clad forearm, radius and ulna each with its little individual sleeve. And because everything doesn’t suck enough already, one of the _other_ reasons you’re here decides to make itself known at this perfectly not awkward _at all_ moment.

If you think about it, you’ll almost be able to hear him.

_ohh, i know ya do. gotta ask me real nice, k?_

“Papyrus?”

“YES?”

“Will you do the thing?”

“MY IMMENSE TALENTS ARE AT YOUR DISPOSAL.” You feel a dry, barely-there _nyeh_ stirring your hair. “WELL. _THIS_ ONE, AT LEAST. NYEH HEH HEH...”

Papyrus shows your body how to follow the rhythm his taps out in demonstration. It only takes a minute or two before you’re no longer even slightly sexually aroused. If someone asked you if Sans was having sex or not, you’d definitely know the answer, but it’s no longer...intrusive. You feel another low, dirty burn of guilt; you wonder if Edge can do this for Red. Then you sigh it out, because it’s none of your business either way. Papyrus’s resonance eventually lulls you to sleep, and you wake up feeling fantastic.

The next three weeks are relentlessly normal.

You and Sans talk about what happened once he’s done the sex part of going over it with Grillby. He’s pretty sure it’s _him_ Red’s feeling, and that your suggestion mostly worked. At some point Sans also tells you Red decided to try and get ‘revenge’, the anticlimactic (ha) result being Sans indifferently experiencing what he calls “a case of hotbutt,” and continuing to cook his eggs. It’s hilarious, and he uses that one in his next show despite your warning. The laugh he gets for that one is sincere enough that he feels like he needs to make up for it. He ends up using the same ‘tibia’ pun so many times, _Grillby_ throws a fry basket at him.

You both agree to go to Alphys and let her do sex science to you regardless.

You end up staying over at the skeleton household most nights, because you and Papyrus want to spend more time together.

Sans is in sleepyskull mode, but nonetheless putters around the kitchen to make you some coffee. Because it’s morning, and you need to work today. He hasn’t poisoned you once so far, so you leave your beloved little chaos orb to do his thing without your helpful suggestions. It helps _you_ and your blood pressure if you don’t actually _watch_ him do it….but he’s so _cute_.

Papyrus leans his narrow hips against the counter, arms crossed as he gives you The Look.

“What?” you pout, looking away disingenuously.

“WE TALKED ABOUT THIS.”

You shrug, keep looking away. “Maybe I just want to know what the deal was with all that.”

“SIGHHHHH,” Papyrus bleats. The window rattles a little. “THE _DEAL_.” He waits until you look at him, then does his angled socket-roll plus headshake for good measure. You endure it stoically because you’re the one skipping ahead again, even if he’s had to give you A Talk about it more than once. Papyrus points his pointy sockets pointedly at his brother, who is obliviously filling an electric kettle with restorative water from underground tap.

“GOOD MORNING, SANS,” he says coaxingly.

“...hnn?” Sans blinks at the water as the kettle overflows. He’ll probably keep it there for a few more minutes until the fact that it’s full already finally penetrates. You and Papyrus are used to it. “…..mmm. morn’n.”

“DID FRISK AND SARI STAY OVER AFTER ALL?” Papyrus had gone Out last night instead of watching his shows or Doing Stuff in the garage while everyone else slept. He just got back. There's a dead leaf caught in his scarf. Papyrus narrows his sockets at you and makes even more eye contact while slowly eating the crunchy leaf, since Sans has to think about a question of that magnitude for a while.

“...mmmyeah.”

“HOW ARE FRISK AND SARIEL _DOING_? IS YOUR TERRIBLE INFLUENCE TAKING EFFECT?”

“...heh.” Sans smiles gently at the overflowing water like it’s an aesthetic fountain in a public park. “sorta. they gotta get worn out first, but...yeah. they c’n sleep sometimes ‘f i hold ‘em.”

Papyrus is still staring a challenge at you as he addresses his brother.

“AND HOW IS WOOooOOOOooOORK?”

Sans finally shuts off the water, tips out the excess into the sink. He overdoes it, accidentally dumping out more than half the water. He gives it an evaluating look, decides to settle for what he’s got.

“called alphie. decided not ta go today,” he admits, shuffles over to the base that heats it. He surreptitiously dries the element connection at the base of the kettle with his sleeve. It’s still dripping as he sets it on there. “thought i might head over with readz.”

“AHH! A BRILLIANT PLAN TO NOT ONLY SLACK OFF, BUT TO SIMULTANEOUSLY PREVENT _OTHERS_ FROM WORKING.” Papyrus grins fondly, even as he stares daggers right into your eyes. “YOUR SLOTH KNOWS NO BOUNDS, AS USUAL.” He pauses for dramatic effect in the midst of his attempt at smalltalk.

“AND HOW IS GRILLBY?”

Sans freezes in the middle of turning on the kettle. You tear your eyes away from Papyrus’s innocent grin as it grows not-very-obviously smug to watch actual sweat bead up on Sans’s skull. It has to be a full minute of silence before his phalanges dart out to depress the switch and start the water heating.

“...good,” Sans manages, his voice tight. He takes a deep breath and lets it out, but you can’t hear it. Only see it from the way his shoulders rise and fall oh-so-slightly. Because you know him. The part of you that’s always aware of him….has butterflies in its stomach? Huh??

“he’s good,” Sans manages. “got heats comin’ ta stay over later this week.”

“WELL, THAT’S WONDERFUL TO HEAR,” Papyrus caws, a little flicker of satisfaction in his black sockets as he stares you own some more. Then it flickers away, to be replaced by dawning anxiety. His teeth part in discomfort.

“EH….WHEN?? ….EXACTLY IS HE COMING?”

Sans scratches his coccyx, seeming more at ease now. “uh….thursday.”

Now _Papyrus_ is sweating.

“AND, FOR NO PARTICULAR REASON, HOW LONG? DOES HE PLAN TO STAY???”

“depends.” Sans looks amused now, and considerably more awake. “might be through the weekend.”

Papyrus’s skull droops in defeat for a brief moment before jerking back up. His teeth gleam defiantly. “I’LL….ALSO HAVE SOME COFFEE!!!”

Sans chuckles, shuffles over to his brother. Papyrus reaches up and hands down the coffee canister, but Sans’s grin flattens when he looks inside. Sans lets out a heavy sigh, turns to you.

“gotta go get some more coffee, darlin’.”

You obediently shut your eyes. When you open them, Sans is out running his errand and Papyrus is pouting.

“Papyrus, you don’t drink coffee. Not except on holidays, at least.”

“I’M GOING TO BE WORKING OVERTIME,” he caws crankily. “TO PAY GRILLBY FOR THE DAMAGES.”

“What damages?”

“_THESE_ DAMAGES,” Papyrus groans, flat on his back in the wreckage of several tables. Undyne hollers, executing a perfect fisherman’s suplex on Heats Flamesman, who is apparently wearing a tiny, fireproof unitard that allows her to grapple against him without getting _instantly_ burned. She is also covered in burns. You look down at the still-groaning skeleton before you, noticing that he is also wearing a unitard covered in lace appliques, enormous hot-glued bows, inexplicably placed holes, and sections that appear to be hand-knitted.

A blonde wig smolders a few feet away.

Undyne pins Heats Flamesman, screaming some more as her hands heat up. MK’s got a striped shirt on, and is slamming their tail down for the count.

Sans, Alphys and Grillby are sitting in a row lined up on top of the bar, chilling on the forbidden counter like this is something that just _happens_. Alphys is lolling practically in Sans’s lap, blushing and whispering something that’s making Sans laugh so hard his sockets are leaking everywhere. Alphys sets her drink down and darts out a claw. She snatches up one of Sans’s tears on it, then scrambles back and mimes bringing it to her mouth in slow motion. Sans squawks in indignant outrage. He drops his glass and lunges at her….

...and they both roll right off the countertop and fall behind the bar. You’re alarmed because Sans is fragile, but then you hear his indistinct bellows, presumably vowing revenge. He’s not doing the thing so you can understand, but it’s fine. Your ears would probably end up as burned as Undyne. The floor trembles beneath you, and the wall of shelved bottles behind the bar rattles dangerously. Grillby doesn’t even look away from the...wrestling? In fact, he’s got about four colors flickering up around the neck of his shirt...which is halfway undone, for fuck’s sakes. His tie is just a strip of cloth draped crookedly over the front, and his vest is nowhere in….oh. _You’re_ wearing it.

Grillby leans up and over, his shirt opening more until you can see right into the pale yellow center of his body. Yeesh. He’s kneeling with a hand holding the edge of the counter to look down. The hand holding his full glass lifts up, catches the light. It’s purple.

Oh _god_.

That is a brimming glass of _Papyrus_.

Papyrus invents parties so his loved ones will know he cares. He goes to a lot of trouble, makes sure everyone can participate to the degree they’re willing to. Some things make Papyrus _as_ happy as his parties, but nothing makes him happi_er_. And this one’s going swimmingly, better than expected. His fibula may be slightly cracked, but that’s a small price to pay. And that’s the truth; you can taste it on his breath as fear spins itself away from bravery, billows out of your lungs bluer than before. A refreshing taste of the long view.

…_Y-yo**u** can **DO** it...b...b**a**by b**oy**!!_ Grillby manages to catch himself from tipping right over the front of the bar he’s leaning over, sloshing purple liquid that puts out a non-elemental-fire starting in Undyne’s hair. Good to know that’s how it works, you suppose. Grillby’s normally barely-there voice is now the deafening roar of a wildfire devouring acres of scrub. 

_...Hehe...I f…forgot I don’t weigh anything…_ he mutters, wobbling strangely. Grillby’s still talking so everyone can understand, though. He looks down, thrusts his glass out again.  _ ….**Come on, ****HEATS FLAMESMAN****!** Fuck up her **WHOLE** **day!!!**_

The match has been over for about a minute at this point, and MK’s healing Undyne’s burns. Again.

“Don’t you worry, Pops!!” Undyne hollers up at the drunk elemental riding the perfectly stationary bar like it’s a fractious pony. “He almost snatched me BALD!”

“For Fuck’s Sakes...” you mutter quietly, sliding silent under the hullaballoo and the increased volume of Grillby’s cheesy music. You crouch down in the wreckage near Papyrus carefully. Your own unitard is surprisingly comfortable, despite and because of having obviously been made by Undyne. If you had nipples, they’d be flapping in the breeze. Hence the vest. You definitely drank _something_, but you and Papyrus have a different reaction to Papyrus, and _Someone_ has to keep a handle on this fiasco. You sit carefully, making sure it seems like you two Just Happened to want to hang out on the floor, rather than Papyrus being legitimately unable to rise for the immediate present.

“Are You Hurt, Fellow Competitor?” you whisper solicitously. And discreetly.

Papyrus pulls you a little closer, curling up more. You put your arm over his and rub his soft undergarment-clad forearm, radius an ulna each with its little individual sleeve. And because everything doesn’t suck enough already, one of the _other_ reasons you’re here decides to make itself known at this perfectly not awkward _at all_ moment.

If you think about it, you’ll almost be able to hear him. So you don’t.

You rub Papyrus’s arms where they’re wrapping your middle.

“I, um. Still kind of need you to do the thing,” you say quietly.

“OF COURSE,” Papyrus repeats dryly. “IT’S ENTIRELY _MY_ FAULT SOMEONE KEEPS BREAKING MY CONCENTRATION.”

You blush furiously, but still appreciate the hum of Papyrus’s body making you more physically comfortable in a few key ways.

“So. Was that whole dancing thing...some kind of monster proposal? Are they married now?”

“NO???” Papyrus quacks, sounding mildly scandalized. “CAN YOU IMAGINE ME ALLOWING MY OWN BROTHER TO SAUNTER AROUND IN A TACKY COLLAR LIKE SOME KIND OF--” Papyrus cuts off with a choking noise. “WELL. I SUPPOSE YOU CAN.”

“Red’s wearing a _marriage_ collar?” you strangle out. “What?? Who’s he married to?”

“HE _ISN’T_, AND THAT’S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS,” Papyrus says tightly instead of just pretending you didn’t say anything like a polite monster would.

“Okay,” you reply, relentlessly unoffended. When you look, Papyrus has turned pink once again. But only because you reminded him of the other Sans and Papyrus. Red and Edge, washed up on their doorstep like a rotten-stinky fox corpse Papyrus doesn’t like to think about, and now he's all alone in it because…

You clear your throat and duck your head so you’re not touching his bare chin anymore.

“GRILLBY IS SANS’S BUSINESS NOW,” Papyrus says plainly. “AND SANS IS GRILLBY’S. IT TOOK THEM LONG ENOUGH.”

“Are they like...officially more than friends now or something?”

Papyrus sockets blinks at you. “NO?”

“But...something changed between them tonight, right?”

“NOT PARTICULARLY.” Papyrus doesn’t shrug so as not to needlessly jostle you, but he gives the impression of having done so.

You sigh and give up.

“I’m never going to understand monster things,” you gripe quietly. Papyrus helps you turn around to face him, then actually wiggles down so you don’t get a crick in your neck instead of pulling you up to his level. You stay close enough to keep the aura going, but far enough to see each other easily. “So, what changed is now everyone can _ask_ them about each other in a specific way? That’s the big deal??”

“YES,” Papyrus says unexpectedly, expression unchanged. “WELL, YOU _COULD_ HAVE, OF COURSE. AND _YOU_ COULD HAVE.” He means a person asking would have been rude to do so, unless that person was you because apparently they’re both your business now. If Papyrus wasn’t so close to your face you’d blow one of your patented raspberries, but he’s a nice skeleton and doesn’t deserve to be sprayed with your spit for telling the truth.

“IT’S APPRECIATED,” he says, but his face slowly slides back into being all slack and sad anyways.

“Aww. I was trying to cheer you up.”

Papyrus huffs softly, looks to the side.

“….SEE PREVIOUS.”

"Oh," you say after a minute. "_Their_ relationship didn't change. Their relationships with everyone _else_ did."

"THAT'S NOT A BAD WAY TO PUT IT, ACTUALLY?"

You reach up and take his skull between your hands. It makes him pink, and feel confused. “You’re not _alone_, Papyrus.”

Papyrus waits instead of replying. He feels alone, but it’s true. He has Undyne, and Annoying Dog, and Sans, and Mettaton, and the rowdy teens of Ebott, and Toriel, and even Grillby sometimes, and...a lot of people, really. But there’s a sensitive burn on his soul where Flowey used to be, someone who understands pain. Someone who understands him.

But then he looks in your eyes, realizes there’s someone else, too.

“You should do a party,” you suggest quietly, and a little life comes back into those impossibly black sockets, the invisible eyes that hide his fear.

Papyrus rubs your arm with a weak smile. It’s okay if you see the weakness of it sometimes. You know why it’s there better than almost anyone. You tilt your face up and lend him the strength of your own smile. Papyrus closes the distance between you and tilts his skull, then sets his nasal aperture just under your nostrils. His teeth are tepid and smooth against your cheek.

Papyrus invents parties so his loved ones will know he cares. He goes to a lot of trouble, makes sure everyone can participate to the degree they’re willing to. Some things make Papyrus _as_ happy as his parties, but nothing makes him happi_er_. And this one’s going swimmingly, better than expected. His fibula may be slightly cracked, but that’s a small price to pay. And that’s the truth; you can taste it on his breath as fear spins itself away from bravery, billows out of your lungs bluer than before.

His fear slowly lessens, and your comfort levels rise. A refreshing taste of the long view, and you and Papyrus spend quite a while making out on the couch.

“WE ARE _NOT_ MAKING _OUT!!_” Papyrus squawks, utterly scandalized. “THIS IS NOT A _SECRET CANOODLING_ ACTIVITY. YOU CAN GET _TROPHIES_ FOR THIS ON HOLIDAYS!!”

You back up enough to grin at him.

“Monsters do _sex things_ on holidays,” you say in a stage whisper, widening your eyes and lifting your eyebrows. He sighs, absolutely disgusted. Then his arm hooks around the back of you neck and yanks you close again.

“YOU’RE THE WORST,” he bleats plaintively, nudging his hard face against yours. “I HATE THIS.”

“I knyow,” you mumble, kinda mushed against hard bone. It’s fine, though. “Me tyoo.”

“I CAN’T PUT IT OFF FOREVER,” Papyrus caws softly against your face, then pulls back. He’s sad, and it’s more serious. The fear creeps back in. “WHAT IF...I CAN’T? WHAT IF IT’S...GROSS?”

You sigh, frowning in thought at you rub his humeri in what you hope is a bracing manner.

“We might be able to figure something out,” you say hesitantly. “I don’t know what’ll happen, though. It might get awkward.”

“I…DON’T KNOW IF…THAT’S THE WORST IDEA WE’VE HAD?” he caws slowly.

“How about we leave some space here to figure it out if we need to come back?”

“SEE PREVIOUS,” he says again. Neither of you look at each other.

You narrow your eyes against the salty wind, gazing at Papyrus curiously. His eyes meet yours, and there’s a flash of anger. He can’t take the time to remove his glove, because Edge’s attention is supposed to be on him right now, and he can’t talk and keep it at the same time.

“_Don’t_! (INTEGRITY→That Which Observes; Becomes!)!! Not yet.”

“Sorry,” you try, and Papyrus shudders. “It feels like...I don’t know. Like everything's repeating. Something good happens, then something bad. Sans goes to Grillby’s, we do some cuddles. The kids just…_grow up,_ and keep on doing that. Someone falls off a fucking log and we all bite bullets waiting for them to get better. Me and Sans somehow _ruin sex_ again, we have to go see Alphys so she can look up our soul-assholes, and I embarrass everyone to death. You have a party. I do a painting. Toriel bakes. We all get drunk, then figure out we’re gonna get annihilated. You turn on tunes and fuck your car, and Sans sits on the ground and waits for death. I shit my pants and fall through the roof. It’s all the _same_. More of the same.”

“WELL….YES?” Papyrus says eventually. “THAT’S… LITERALLY WHAT YOU SIGNED UP FOR.”

“Not the rest of it,” you whisper hoarsely. “I’m the one...who can’t...”

“Papyrus?”

“NYES?”

“I’m here again.”

“I KNOW.”

“I’m not ready, either.”

He’s quiet for a while.

You hold each other.

His tears finally soak through to your scalp, and you start crying, too.

“I don’t know if I can do it, Papyrus,” you admit quietly. “It’s… this might be too much for me. I’m not...brave. I’m not a hero, like you.”

“WELL.” Papyrus does that weird little hitching sound in his skull he gets when he’s deciding what to say. “YOU DON’T...HAVE TO BE THERE FOR ALL OF IT.”

“Huh?”

“WE’RE _ALREADY_ TAKING CARE OF PART OF IT. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE HERE THE WHOLE TIME. YOU HAVE… OTHER THINGS. HUMAN… LIFE THINGS?”

Your arms tighten. “But you shouldn’t have to be alone.”

“I WON’T BE.” Papyrus rubs your back up and down. “I _WON’T_ BE ALONE. AT THE HARDEST PARTS...YOU’LL BE THERE WITH ME, BECAUSE YOU ALREADY _WERE_. YOU ALREADY MADE SURE YOU WERE WATCHING OVER US.”

“So...you’ll deal with it? The really bad parts?”

“SANS AND I. YES.”

“I’m picking up on the fact that you mean that in the…expanded sense.”

He makes the dry skeleton throat-clearing noise. “WELL. THERE ARE STILL SEVERAL KEY POINTS AT WHICH YOU MAY NEED TO...ARRIVE.”

“I know.”

“YOU STILL HAVE IT?”

“Yeah.”

“HE’LL TELL YOU WHEN HE’S READY.”

“I know.” You swallow thickly. “If it ever gets too bad...come back here and I’ll help you. Whatever you need, okay?”

Papyrus shivers all over. He hugs you tight, and sighs like it comes from the depths of his soul.

“IT’S A DEAL.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> O man!! So!! I made a Twitter for ummm fic writing stuff? Fandom stuff? Place to yell at me for my awful bullshit? Fair warning it’s 18+ ONLY just like this fic :D
> 
> https://twitter.com/gilded_pleasure
> 
> Probably going to put drawings and stuff there too <3
> 
> Oh, and the song Sans and Grillby were dancing to was The Flame by Cheap Trick   
https://youtu.be/muhFxXce6nA


	13. some like it hot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> so here’s the chapter i’ve just been “editing” over and over instead of actually working on connecting the dots  
hope u like it as much as i apparently did
> 
> Radiohead - Nude  
https://youtu.be/BbWBRnDK_AE
> 
> **[discussion of past abuse, sexual dysfunction]**

Wow.

He asked.

Grillby actually asked him.

Sans takes a deep, bracing breath. “thanks.”

Grillby’s face flickers, slides from self-consciousness to confusion. Sans gives him an encouraging smile, but it feels awfully weak around the edges.

“for asking. i needed you to ask me, cause it means we gotta have a talk, okay? gotta tell ya something.”

Grillby waits quietly in his arms, pets Sans real nice all over until he sighs and shivers. Sans closes his sockets.

“i know you’re not all that good with asking for stuff. but it’s okay, because you try.” Sans rubs his hand slow along a part of Grillby’s face he makes firm so they can touch each other like this. “it can be hard for me too, but…i needed you ta meet me halfway on this one.”

_...Sans….you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to._

“i want to,” Sans replies hoarsely. “told myself i had to if you asked. i….promised.” It peters out to a whisper. Promised himself, but it still counts. “if we do it like that,” Sans’s breath catches for a second, so he takes another one, “there’s a chance you’ll feel more than jus’ that. i, uh….”

…_Why don’t we change __voices__?_ Grillby suggests. Sans’s sockets open wide; he nods and rolls on his side. Grillby flows and shifts, cradles Sans like spoons nestled together. He wraps Sans tight, then sends runnels of flame down his arms, coating his hands. Grillby can’t see the words, but he doesn’t have to. He just feels them, and that’s good enough.

“I have to touch you in order for you to feel it. But...my climax may force my Self into You,” Sans’s hands gesture gracefully, “no matter what I want… or you, I fear.” He can feel Grillby roiling softly against his back, shuddering in sorrow where he’s wrapped around him. “My Choice was interfered with in order to cause that to happen. During the time I can’t remember.”

_...Are you certain it will?_

“I’m certain that it’s possible,” he continues, sockets shut to make it easier. “But otherwise, no.”

Grillby’s quiet for a while. Sans lets him think about whatever it is he wants to say. Waits for him to decide if he will or not.

…_.Has it happened before?_

Sans’s breath shudders out.

“Yes,” he gestures simply. Then he separates their hands, encourages Grillby to wrap around him, to give and receive comfort. He doesn’t know why that was the hardest part, but he did it.

He looks up briefly to see the unasked questions in Grillby’s expression.

“they know...and they don’t know at the same time. you know how they are.” Sans sighs. He knows how you are, too. “but it happened the first time i touched ‘em. they came, an’ i felt it.”

_...It doesn’t….really work that way…?_

“i know,” Sans whispers. “lotta me doesn’t…work how it’s supposed to, i guess.” Sans thinks about saying it, then goes ahead. “it mighta been mine.” The orgasm, he means. That’s happened before too. Times Sans thought he was feeling you, but it was his own body providing those unfamiliar-familiar sensations, reminded how by the strength of your soul, the song of your body’s resonance.

“back then i didn’t know i could feel like that. but once it got to…a point, i figured out what was gonna happen. and it did.”

…_.Oh, dear. Was it like…?_

Grillby’s wondering if it was like the accidental merge with you, when his body had taken over and subjected both of you to something unpleasant and frightening. Sans does a tiny headshake. “we stopped for a minute….i made sure they knew what it was. told em i didn’t know how it would go, cause i never did that before. but we still wanted to.”

Sans cranes his neck back until he can look at Grillby upside-down. Huh. Apparently Grillby didn’t realize Sans had not only not done that with _him_...he’d just kinda _never_ done that. Sans smiles weakly.

“yeah,” he admits softly. “never did that with a monster.” Grillby returns his smile. He didn’t know Sans hadn’t shared his magic with anyone, because Grillby never _wanted_ Sans to push his magic into him. They were the same that way, just for different reasons.

Grillby _had_ let someone push into him at some point, which is how he knows he doesn’t care for it. And that’s _all_ Sans knows, but he’d let Sans feel the mild discomfort of it with his touch. It had been ages ago, when they’d first brought it up. For Grillby, someone else’s magic in there felt like spending a bit too much time with someone you nevertheless like very much. Nothing frightening or painful, just a preference. Grillby’s honesty from long ago makes Sans want to offer more, too. It’s not the kind of thing Sans would usually say to him…but something fresh and midnight blue makes him want to. So he does.

“always thought maybe i was selfish to keep it all to myself,” he says quietly. “but now... even if i can’t remember…maybe it made sense in a way. because i worried someone could take it no matter what.”

Because someone _had_, is the part he doesn’t need to say. Sans knows because another thing Sans’s body had tried to tell him that way had been not to let anyone else push magic in. And that was something Sans had challenged. He wanted to know if his body was telling the truth, and Grillby had helped him. Sans had asked Grillby to push his magic in, and it had been remarkably awful all around.

“guess this is part of what happened that time,” is all he says about it. Not good enough. Sans promised himself he would be honest. He tries closing his sockets again, takes a deep breath. “why i had to come again before i could push in.” Sans’s magic tightens around his voice, but he pushes through it. “m...might be why i do it myself,” he whispers, and his hand twitches in the gesture to indicate his genitalia. Sans lets Grillby touch him. But if he wants to come, he does it with his own hands.

Fact is, Grillby’s magic in his soul had been painful, and the pain had wrung two unwilling orgasms from him. Then his body had locked his magic away from him, resentful of his betrayal, until he’d forced it out with a third. Sans had asked Grillby to touch his genitalia for him then, because he was in a bad way. Confused and humiliated, trying to hurt himself, but Grillby held him. Let Sans know he could help, and he did.

Sadly, that’s probably why Sans’s body tends to be reluctant with Grillby now…since that had also been the first time his genitalia had come out for Grillby. Sans made an error in judgement, tried to do too many new things at once. Sans feels like he needs to prove he’s okay, that he can do it without hurting himself.

It messed him up in the head a little, maybe.

Sans can’t remember what was done to him, but his body’s responses don’t paint a pretty picture. Sans can be forced to orgasm when someone else’s magic goes into his soul, and orgasm can force his own magic out. He even grapples with it when he’s only touching himself. Grillby already knows it’s a struggle for Sans to keep his magic in, sometimes. That’s why they play the keep-away game with Sans’s soul, other games with Grillby holding him. They say and do things that help him control it. And it’s another reason why he’d wanted to be in control of his climaxes.

…_It’s fine that you do it yourself_, Grillby begins gently, but Sans shakes his head.

“i dunno,” he whispers. “seems like i might like you to do it sometimes. if i wasn’t...scared, i guess.”

Instead of telling Sans it’s okay some more, Grillby flows around front and gives him a big hug. Squeezes tight, then uses his face to warm up the top of his skull until he shivers, pets the length of his spine firmly until it loosens up. Sans combs his fingers through flames, making Grillby wiggle and flicker along their path.

…_.I love when you do that_, Grillby sighs quietly. It makes Sans startle, then make a quiet little noise in his skull as he does it some more. _….It usually upsets you when your body does things __you don’t intend_, he continues after they’re both more relaxed.

“but i c’n keep it in sometimes if i try real hard.” Sans feels like that’s important, too, although they both know Sans isn’t a fan of trying really hard. “but, uh. i usually keep it separate.” Sans likes to share bodies and souls, but he’s careful when it’s both. “guess that’s why.”

…_Sans. __You know __I only want to do things you like, __too__._

Sans pulls away until he can see his expression again, his emotive flames gathered up into a kind of face humans can’t see, but with practice, can know anyways. Sans can always see it though, whether it’s a face or not. It’s obvious Grillby didn’t know this would bring up so many complex issues for Sans, because he was so hung up on his own. That doesn’t bother Sans; just makes him feel like he can relate. Although Grillby doesn’t regret asking, he’s more than ready to accept a ‘no’ as his answer. He also seems to think Sans should take his time thinking about it, pulling away until he’s just fire holding Sans’s hands.

But he’s got it wrong.

Sans already took the time he needed, and he used it to decide they both deserve the chance to feel something special with each other. He’d decided that if Grillby could make himself vulnerable enough to ask for what he wants, Sans would in turn become vulnerable enough to explain exactly what it meant for him to do that. Make sure Grillby _understands_, and he does.

Now they’re having a different conversation.

“’m not tellin’ ya _no_,” Sans says slow and deliberate, watching carefully. “’m letting you _know_ what can happen if we did that.” He tries an encouraging smile; he’s not good at this, but he’s trying his best. “’cause you only like your own,” he adds for clarity.

That’s what he’d really been explaining. It’s up to Grillby, because he’d be the one Sans’s magic could be going inside. Because Sans can’t control himself.

Sans deals with a lot of sexual shame, even when it’s not obvious. But Grillby not wanting his magic had gone a long way toward helping him feel more comfortable with his own preferences and boundaries. Because there’s no big reason for it; Grillby just doesn’t like it, and that’s fine. It had been Grillby who helped Sans understand that there’s no one right way to share your soul, your body, or your magic. That liking some things and not others is normal, and everyone understands that.

Grillby looks at him for a long time, thoughtful in a different way.

_...Will it upset you if it comes out?_

“it might,” Sans admits. He’s accepted the possibility, and it seems like Grillby does, too. He flickers all over, then his whole body softens with a hot-orange glow. There’s always been room in this bed for both of them, and that includes Sans getting upset sometimes. Hell, there’s been room for two years’ worth of Sans dealing with fallout and frustration from the pushing incident, and room for several sweet months’ worth of someone remarkably special to share good things with right along with them.

…_.__It appears we spent a great deal of time thinking about this_, Grillby says, equal parts fond and wry. Then the wryness falls away, and he’s just fond. _...__And now we’ve __**talked**__ about it, which is of course __**wildly**__ out of character for both of us. _Sans laughs, gives Grillby’s flames a squeeze with his hands. _...__I...would like that. To see how it goes.  
_

Sans looks away with a little sigh. Well, if he can give Grillby anything to feel. Just another way his body doesn’t always cooperate.

“can’t make any promises,” Sans whispers, magic seething across the surface of his skull. “it might not come out.”

_...__I know, Sans_. Grillby reassures him gently. _...I know __**you**__._ Sans shuts his sockets, shudders at the rush of desire those crackling words summon from inside him. However Sans is, Grillby still wants him. _….Would you like to try?_

“…yeah.” Sans grins, feels hazy anticipation as his eyes loosen right up. “we c’n try anything you want, k?” His sockets narrow, watching Grillby’s gorgeous response to those words light him up inside. They’re both in an adventurous mood, and Sans wants Grillby to know he’s got license to get creative. He’s really glad they talked it out.

…_..Can I call you?_ Grillby flickers shyly. All the air gets pushed right out of Sans as he fills up with a few soft, squishy feelings instead. That’s how Grillbz always thinks of it. Like he’s calling Sans’s body the same as his soul, asking if it wants to come out and feel good. Makes Sans feel like it’s okay if the shape’s something he doesn’t feel like bothering with…or if nothing comes out at all, which is often just as likely.

“yeah,” Sans gushes, opening his eager arms. Grillby’s back in them just as quick, rolls him onto his back and slides up over him. Makes Sans shiver, like he’s calm and excited at the same time. The weightless heat of his old friend relaxes him...but it doesn’t relax _into_ him. To Sans’s surprise, Grillby’s boundaries not only stay intact, his body goes more solid than usual when they have sex. Grillby loves the way their permeable magic interacts, and often prefers that.

But right now he’s doing arms and legs, as if he’s a nonpermeable monster. Two of each, and a suggestion of something mouthlike he presses to Sans’s bones to taste him. Sans gasps, rumbles a few words of breathless praise toward the flexible opening that’s soft and permeable inside, the better to absorb Sans’s sweetness. Sans delights in squeezing Grillby’s girthy middle between his knees, riles the flames curling at the back of his head roughly to watch them shimmer and split off to express Grillby’s increasing arousal.

“ohh…that’s it,” Sans whispers shakily as Grillby runs the opening along his cervical vertebrae, then grunts when he presses hard at the magic between. An inquisitive dart of firmness, blunt and pushing inside the mobile rim. Sans’s sockets slip closed, the better to savor the pleasure of being tasted light up the inside of his skull, contrasted with the blunt heat shoving at his densely occupied intervertebral spaces.

Sans moans when he feels a hot pullthere; again when that blunt pushing happens at the same time. He suppresses a shudder out of reflex, breath hissing through his teeth at the pull of that cupped opening, pierced at the center with a firm-flickering dart of flame. Panting, Sans reaches up and strokes Grillby’s face.

“c’mere, hot stuff,” he coaxes, bringing that novel opening to the narrow sliver of his own mouth, “gimme a sip...” Sans sucks in a ragged breath through his nasal aperture as his mouth is flooded with rough heat and prickly sparks of excited, nervous desire. Sans clutches Grillby impossibly closer, delighted. His taste is familiar, wickedly nostalgic. It summons an intoxicating recollection to go with the familiarity of Grillby’s firm body to the fore.

(Long ago, still underground. A too-long night they’d passed tangled together in the fireproof bed, making hope. Grillby had confessed that he’d become gravid at some point under Sans’s patient, relentless touch; he knew the feeling since it’d happened before on his own. Grillby’s crackling whisper, emerging unsteadily between caresses: he might be able to conceive if he pushed his magic into himself that night. Sans remembers Grillby’s nervous excitement in his mouth, this effervescent bittersmoke tang as Grillby told him he’d decided to try for another child. Again when he’d asked if Sans would touch him while he did it. Asked right out plain as plaid, smoldering wantonly in his arms and driving Sans out of his mind with desire.)

Sans drinks it down, lifts his chin demandingly for more. Grillby moans and fills his mouth again.

Grillby had given and taken with and of his whole self that night, come unmoored from his usual hangups. His body had stayed solid like now, and he had pushed with hands so Sans could touch his magic as it roared out into his soul. Sans shivers hard as Grillby pulls away from his mouth and moves lower. He thinks about the shameless, sincere way Grillby had poured into himself while that fiery little opening slicks and flickers over his ribs now.

(Sans shivers with his fingertips’ memory of toying into the resistance of fluid fire grown alchemical and strange, like nothing Sans had ever felt before. Solid, searing limbs had tangled and grappled with Sans’s bones; they’d shouted helplessly together as they felt the spark catch, felt it _happen_. Grillby had pushed his soul back into his body, but it hovered around his fingers and faded slowly back into him, a lingering goodbye as Grillby shook and wept with its intensity. Then he’d fallen back in a sated stupor, holding Sans close to share the resonance as he moaned and panted through not a rush but a soul-quake, a generative flood of epic proportions.)

It’s Sans who moans and pants now, cursing softly as Grillby puts his head into Sans’s body to mouth at his spine. The bluntly lapping heat starts to remind Sans of the way his genitalia feels, the way it echoes between his bones. Sans gasps as that hot little opening nudges at the inside of his femur. Grillby keeps at it, teasing nuzzles from knee to ischium, switching legs and rubbing the dense knobs of his femurs with his fingers. Taking his time.

(Sans thinks about how he had caressed and praised and fed Grillby for hours afterward, voice thick in his skull with awe at the experience they’d shared. To Sans’s surprise, Grillby had clambered weightlessly right onto Sans’s body once he’d recovered a little. He’d taken Sans’s hands, held bone wrists together one-handed above his skull.)

Sans shivers and moans, remembering the same solid heat between his legs now pressing him down into the soft mattress then, growling with desire and repletion. _Stars_, Sans wants this. Just as much as he’d wanted to feel what Grillby had felt, starting a new soul in his own.

(He’d tugged Sans hard and rough, then sent a tendril of flame inside his soul while he played his body like an instrument. Sans’s voice had poured out obediently as Grillby let him feel _all_ of it, every last bit of what still had him moaning and trembling even so much later. Grillby had pushed as much as he safely could, given his all to make the new soul strong and hale, distinct and independent. Sans had wrapped his legs around that searing solidity, arching his spine into the stroke of Grillby’s tireless fist til it rattled like the branches on every tree in Snowdin at once. When he couldn’t bear it any more, Grillby finally released his hands. Sans had pushed his own magic into himself with all ten fingers until he wept with merciless satisfaction.)

_...Oh…_ _._

Sans only realizes his sockets had slipped shut when he opens them to see Grillby’s head between his tented femurs, partially obscured by the tremble of his own fully extended genitalia. It glistens darkly; he’s already wet. _….If I’d known __this little trick__ rated_ _**all five stars**__, I’d have tried it sooner…_

Sans huffs in amusement as he plays back his own soft, mindless cursing. It takes a lot to get Grillby to cuss in bed (which is half the fun), but he loves that Sans does it. Says he knows how he’s doing by which ones and how many. Sans likes his joke about giving a fuck and two shits, too.

Grillby’s always clever and fun, but Sans shakes his head as he searches for words. His impressively horny response isn’t due to Grillby’s ability to mimic body parts he doesn’t actually have. More like… Sans had been fantasizing about a time his genitalia _would_ have come out if it could have. It had been a very pleasant distraction from performance anxiety.

“i was thinkin’ bout the time you made fuku,” he whispers. Bit of a gauche admission there; magic seethes across his face. Grillby goggles softly, then pales as heat expands from his core. Golden fireflies swirl through him like a meteor shower, stealing Sans’s breath as that hot gaze sharpens. Apparently Grillby remembers that night pretty fondly, too. He holds Sans’s gaze, his regard full of promise as he nips at the inside of Sans’s other femur.

“you tasted so good, like now…” Sans barely hears himself say it, but he grunts softly as Grillby crumbles to temptation and leans in to get his own taste of Sans. It’s a surprising, layered sensation on his genitalia: feeling his magic dissolve into Grillby, the searing heat, and now a nudge of friction on sensitive magic making him mist over again at the spot he touched.

_...__Is that okay?_ Grillby whispers quickly, a little purple at the edges himself now.

“yeah,” Sans replies fervently. “feels good.”

Sans is transfixed by the sight of excitement and lust shimmering apart inside his lover’s body. He loves the way it frames the tangible manifestation of Sans’s desire, firm and twitching between his femurs. Grillby watches Sans carefully as he tastes his genitalia again with that little opening. All the air leaves his skull in a shuddering rush as Grillby lingers, chasing his own curiosity. Oh...oh, wow. His sockets go round. This feels purposeful and directed like when Grillby touches him, but pliant like the passive opening he makes when he wants Sans to fuck him.

Well. This one’s certainly not...passive. Grillby touches it to the other side of his darkly iridescent length and does something there, supple-slick pressure and searing heat. Sans hiccups in the middle of a sigh. This is maybe softer than most of those openings, and more...expressive? Mobile? Astoundingly suggestive of certain acts? Blowjobs are just as popular with monsters as handjobs, after all. And from that expression, Grillby has _plans_ for him.

Plans that might involve putting Sans’s junk inside his little mouth thingie, and suddenly that is _all_ Sans can think about.

“you gonna suck me, hot stuff?” he breathes hopefully. Grillby goes pale yellow to the edges, and Sans inhales sharply as he lets the tip brush his face. Sans is so wet now it gathers into a little trickle that slips down the length. Grillby grins with false innocence, and Sans bites back a groan when he sees a tiny tongue of flame dart out and take it.

…_Oh…Would you like that?_

“dunno,” Sans answers gormlessly, feeling like his whole mind just poured out his auditory canals. “never did it like this before. you, uh. wanna try it?”

_...__Perhaps you should ask me __~real nice~_, Grillby shooshes, tilting his head coquettishly.

“please?” He can tell quite clearly that _Grillby_ wants to, and Sans doesn’t see any shame letting him know it’s mutual. Sans spreads his legs apart more and scoots closer. He tilts his pelvis down to offer the tender, tapering tip to his fiery lover, who continues to astound him with his creativity. “’s already real good,” he adds helpfully.

Grillby grins down at Sans’s offer, then teases some more instead. Sans stays up on an elbow and cranes forward so he can better watch himself be denied, reaches down to pet Grillby encouragingly. If it weren’t for his fused floating ribs, his sockets would be about an inch from Grillby’s face. Grillby’s expression is mischievous, but he peers at Sans carefully as he lips at Sans’s piece again. Sans holds his breath for a second, utterly riveted as he watches Grillby flirt with taking him in, then moving away.

“sorta like a mouth, right?” Sans exhales unevenly, receives another saucy little femur-kiss. He shuts his teeth when a shudder takes him so hard they chatter.

_...Sort of…_ Grillby muses, pretending to ignore the way Sans’s pelvis tries to follow his mouth as he kisses his other femur. _…. __It’s j__ust for fun, __though__. No __pretty teeth like yours..._

Sans huffs and blushes appreciatively as Grillby pulls away, ducks down and does those kisses at the base instead. A dense flame darts bluntly, then explores where his genitalia blends away into permeable magic and bone. He clears wavering magic in his skull as Grillby works his way up the length; Sans is panting by the time he gets to the tip and takes it in, just a little. Turns out it’s even better than he expected, the beloved sear of his touch shaped into soft, flexible resistance that tightens around his magic.

Sans sighs as Grillby takes even more, his genitalia a shadow visible inside undulating flames. He pets the back of Grillby’s neck, and a tiny noise escapes him as stuff starts _happening_ inside. A curious slither seeking out his most sensitive places, then rubbing them with plush softness. When it sticks out like this, Sans’s genitalia usually has a few places that are too sensitive to touch at all. But despite the incredible heat….this feels good on _all_ of them.

Sans gets distracted when he notices this shape’s pretty big, as far as the ones that stick out go. Or at least it seems so when Grillby slides down to put half of it inside his face.

“does that…feel okay?” Sans asks nervously. “comfortable?”

_...__You can’t hurt me, Sans…_ Grillby reminds him, but he pulls off anyways to give him a minute. It’s true; Sans literally isn’t capable of injuring him physically. Sans doesn’t even know why he’s feeling like that, since Grillby’s put Sans in his body all sorts of ways before. Including...his entire body. Eh. It’s probably just how it looks, and sometimes Sans just needs to hear it. Sans blushes a bit, but smiles and relaxes again.

_...I like how it feels_, Grillby adds shyly. _...Can I do __the whole thing__?_

Sans has to clear the wavering magic in his skull yet again before the _yeah_ will come out. He gasps as Grillby slides back down on him. There’s a coiling sear of heat all around, then firmness slicking against the length.

“oh,” Sans breathes as Grillby moves his head to adjust, takes in more of him, “ohh, that’s...a lot going on in there, huh?”

_...__It takes __some__ concentration, yes_, Grillby crackles dryly, and Sans makes a noise that falls impressively short of being a laugh.

“’s an inverse property,” he pants, trying to focus his eyes as he rattles like a maraca, “since i can’t think at _all_ ri’ now...”

Grillby makes a self-satisfied little hum, and Sans nods in foolish agreement. Then he grunts as Grillby tries some nodding of his own, makes it so Sans goes in and out of that tight heat a few times. Grillby’s welcome to be as smug as he wants, because...wow. Sans doubts non-fire blowjobs feel like this, but the fuss is officially warranted. He knows his teeth are hanging open, and doesn’t care. This is seriously doing it for him.

“wanna do it together?” Grillby looks confused. Well, Sans can’t do words good at the moment, so he moves his excitable hand from where it’s trying to gently polish a hole in the back of Grillby’s neck and cups his face instead. His other hand gathers up a wad of the sheet and grips it tight for control. Sans thrusts minutely to show him; Grillby lets out a speculative, pleased whoosh.

“yeah? you...” Sans voice peters out into a sigh as Grillby pushes something hot and blunt along the underside of his genitalia. Sans pulses his hips again, and Grillby deepens the motion, adds a flourish of movement inside. Sans marvels at how quickly they’re able to find a rhythm together, but they’ve been close a long time. This is--

Sans’s puttering thoughts crash into each other and explode when Grillby tightens down and _literally_ sucks on him. His sockets slam closed; he lets out a shocked huff at the hot, unexpected _pull_ that echoes through every joint at once. Makes him feel tender and swollen...in a good way. Feels like when his genitalia first emerges, but _more_.

When that blunt flame darts and slicks around at the underside along with the sucking, the combination is so exquisite he worries for a second he might just pass out. Like every bit of magic between his bones gets drawn through them like a sieve to gather in his genitalia. Makes it quiver like a cork in a bottle, and he can’t _wait_ to for it to pop. His shaking bone fist is close to tearing the bedsheet, but his hand on Grillby stays gentle as he breaks the seal and pulls back to flicker at him. Sans dizzily lets suction draw him right back in, makes a rounded, guttural noise he doesn’t even recognize. Makes it again when Grillby pulls back and keeps sucking this time, swirls and flickers at the twitching tip while increasing the pull on his...cork, so to speak.

_...Good?_

Good doesn’t even begin. Good is to this as Rigel is to Betelgeuse. Air tears raggedly through Sans’s skull with each breath, otherwise he might laugh at the sheer comedic understatement of _good_.

All that comes out is, “o-oh god, _grillby,_” in a gritty whine.

Grillby moans in surprise and delight as he does it again. Sans isn’t really the calling out names type, but Sans’s cognitive functions are somewhere in the vicinity of the aforementioned stars at this moment. At the _next_ moment, his joints ignite with an abrupt urgency that makes him gasp. It’s only been a minute, but the pleasure that’s been toying with him pounces for the kill hard and sudden, condensing into a searing point at the crux of his pubis. Sans’s sockets fly open, desperately trying to focus his eyes and his voice.

“gonna come, okay?” he chokes out.

Grillby falters with shocked desire; Sans has never gotten there this quickly. And instead of pulling away, Sans grimaces in wordless desperation as he rides the edge, thoughts popping like bubbles. When they talked earlier...did Grillby know it would feel like this? Was he waiting to give him this until Sans could handle it? Because Sans feels like he might die if he stops thrusting gently into this ruinously mobile heat. Might die if he keeps going too, but….he doesn’t _want_ to pull away. He wants Grillby to keep doing this. But he can’t think, can’t do anything but groan through his locked teeth as it boils up inside him.

They shout together as Sans floods Grillby’s mouth, its soft rim overflowing with just how much Sans wants Grillby to make him come.

…_..__Yesss__…_ Grillby hisses, suddenly shameless, and Sans feels just as drunk on the taste of his own spend slicking up the inside of Grillby’s hot opening. Grillby’s hands scrabble at his tense-shaky femurs, sliding up to grip his hitching pelvis and take what Sans is offering. _.....Yes, let me __feel__ it__…_ Grillby takes him until his face presses bone, sucks gently and bobs his head. Sans cries out when a hot dart of blunt pressure steadies the sensitive underside, makes the slide of it tight and slippery and perfect. _….Oh, Sans….please..._

That thick, smoky plea kicks Sans’s fingertips right off the ledge. He thrashes with a loud sob, but Grillby holds him steady as the pleasure hitches like a candleflame, then flares up so bright tears start in his sockets. A shuddering withdrawal against tight resistance pushes a breathy keen out of his skull, lilting along with the rolling peak that snug little suck pulls out of him. Each flicker opens the window for a whirlwind to roar through his body, pleasure funneling down to where Grillby’s smoldering opening draws it forth. Sans rides his climax out to the accompaniment of the mute crackle of fire, the wordless rattle of bones, and Sans’s astonished_ oh_ noises until it grinds to a shuddering halt.

Sans makes a pleading garble of not-quite words, pawing weakly at Grillby as his locked arm finally gives. He falls back into a pile of trembling bones and Grillby slides up obligingly, lets Sans pull him down and press their faces together. Sans would usually shove his face right in to fill his skull with smoke and sparks; instead Grillby puts them in from the opening. Sans makes a surprised, vulnerable noise at the ghost of his own sweetness along with it. A little trip down memory lane from two minutes ago, the taste of (sans-wants-to-come). His arms clutch Grillby tight to him as he lifts his chin for more. Sans traces shaky fingers on his back, tells him he was _so good, so perfect_ as he rubs his genitalia gently against his ceaselessly combusting body.

_...I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a detour more…_ Grillby pants. His desire-scent blows hot into Sans’s skull, a giddy, burnt-sugar incense. _...Next time, we can…_

“i c’n go again,” Sans slurs thickly, “’f you still wanna. second time’s usually ev’n better.” Sans is more than ready to ride this mood into the sunset...and considering he already knocked one out, there’s a better chance it won’t take anyone by surprise.

_...Oh…_ Grillby holds him tight, pushes his face into Sans’s cervical vertebrae. _...__Oh, y...__**y**__**es**__….I, I’m…_

Sans strokes all down his back soothingly, still sliding his junk along flames to make sure it doesn’t assume it’s no longer needed. But Grillby moves away and takes Sans’s hand, urges him to touch himself. Oh. Yeah, he should probably try to cool it down a bit first.

“’f we share it….i think you sh’d do it.” Sans is glad all over again for what they just did, and that it went so well. “you wanna rub me, or...want me to fuck you?” He doubts he has to tell Grillby anything that takes concentration shouldn’t be his first choice. Sans doesn’t really play with himself, other than rubbing the base with fingers to keep it interested. Bones are hard, and he already tore Grillby’s sheets once. Grillby shimmers and flickers all over, drawing air in around Sans’s genitalia to help lower its temperature. Sans grins dazedly, about to make a joke about _blowing_ on it, but...wow, that’s a look.

…_.Let me call you_, Grillby asks again, his desire raw enough to make Sans shudder. He means his soul this time.

“yeah….” Flames are already dipping into his ribcage, Grillby’s body still pressed hard against him. “you got m...oh, _fuck_...s-sooooh,” holy shit, he’s saucy tonight, not even using his hands, “h...hhh….mmm…_mmh!_” His shaky cry as Grillby tugs him hard is a word: _ye__ah_. Panting as the heat of Grillby’s gaze penetrates, Sans feels that he pulled himself at the same time. When opens his sockets, he sees that they want the same thing. Grillby’s hands cup them protectively from underneath; a slow, not-quite-cascade of sparks drip gently from them to spiral down his arms.

“c...comin’ in hot, huh?”

Grillby grins sharply, swoops down in a curl of flames to press their faces together.

…_.__Some __**like**__ it hot..._ Grillby growls against bone, nudging roughly. He roils under Sans’s chin and nips hard at vertebrae; the hollow pop and spray of sparks inside his body reduces Sans to a wordless moan.

Grillby sits up on him, takes Sans’s hands into his own instead of coating them with flame. He laces their fingers together, then curves them in to touch them both all at once. Sans groans as Grillby’s presence crashes into him, an exhilarating jolt even with his own touch alongside. Holy _shit_, Grillby’s worked up. Playing at blowjobs had been...he’d _loved_ it, so much more than he’d expected to. Loved giving Sans that deliberate, methodical pleasure, loved the way Sans had cried out and shook. The way he’d been struck dumb by it, then made Grillby beg without saying a word.

Then Sans had come for him, and he’d let Grillby do it. He’s still high on the rush of Sans’s trust, on the marrow-deep shudder of his pelvis. Drunk on the way Sans had given himself up to pleasure so quickly, shuddering apart between his hands, inside his body. Sans moans as Grillby lets him know/feel his own taste, a cool little blurt of not only getting something good, but something_ better than expected_. The hard quiver of his orgasm with flames sliding tight all around had been indescribably intoxicating, as if each swell in his mouth had been a thimbleful of human dopamine. _Addictive_.

He gives it to him all over again, touching him deep. Sans makes it seem so easy to feel pleasure, and it only becomes more alluring to know that it isn’t. Sans is lovely and brave, looks so good letting Grillby take him apart. Grillby wants him _so_ much. He wants Sans to fuck him now, so he can feel the thick, chilly pulse of Sans’s climax happening inside his body again.

Grillby moves down so he can slide the blank crux of his legs along Sans’s genitalia, and concentrates...until it isn’t blank. Sans’s touch shifts in his soul, but Grillby’s not ready yet. Getting there as he slides along, and Sans hisses appreciatively as a hot shower of sparks slips out from inside, tingling prickles of giddy excitement he can taste all along the length of his genitalia.

It coaxes out his own spend, and Grillby moans softly. Sans is ready for him, wants to be inside so badly….he can taste it. Sans smiles up into flames, his eyes broad and filling his sockets. He shuts them, and they overflow. Instead of flames darting out to take them, he moans as Grillby kisses them away. Again when he brings that taste to Sans’s mouth, slipping their mingled spend inside as easily as ever.

Grillby gives Sans’s fingers a lingering caress, then moves until he’s not touching their souls anymore. He tucks Sans’s hands and what they’re holding against his sternum. Grillby plants one hand next to Sans, looks down and lines them up with the other.

Sans’s inhale breaks into three distinct little gasps as Grillby takes him, spine bending back until his occipital bone grinds the pillow. Grillby’s apparently been practicing, because not only is this entrance softer than before….it’s cooler? Slightly? A coil of shyness from Grillby, because he _has_ been practicing…by himself, even. Sometimes. Sans hums in soft approval, his pelvis already curving to feel it out; Grillby flickers nervously and hunches over Sans’s body. He goes more solid all over, shudders and grips Sans’s shoulder to steady himself.

“yeah,” Sans whispers passionately, “’s a _lot_, okay? ’s why i’m gonna let you do it. here...lemme taste you.” Another quiver as he descends, and Sans exhales slowly into Grillby. His face softens to let Sans breathe in smoke, sparks, searing air. It calms them, as does Sans’s expert touch.

“hey. can i put em in here?” Grillby thinks about it, assents with a soft glow of approval. Sans cups his hands against his chest, and they both moan as their souls dip down inside Sans’s ribcage. Sans hopes not using his hands will help keep his magic from pushing.

That’s how they play the keep-away teasing game, when Grillby puts Sans’s soul inside his ribcage, keeps him from touching it with hands. He’s brought himself off without pushing magic during that game before….only with his own soul, though. It’s still just a game, not an impossibility. Sans has pushed from his permeable magic plenty of times, on his own and with partners. Sans holds himself, presses in and hugs his fear.

Then he lets it go, reaches up and circles his arms around Grillby’s firm body instead. He pets his back with one hand, tightens the other to pull him close.

_So close._

Grillby moves again, then makes a soft, self-conscious creaking noise from where his face is buried against Sans’s skull. It bothers Grillby to feel like he’s taking the pleasure for himself, moving to please himself with Sans’s body. He’s resting weightlessly on Sans’s upper body, feeling awkward because Sans usually gets on top for this.

“lemme show you,” Sans whispers, then slides his hands down to Grillby’s hips.

Sans takes a moment to really _feel_ how excited he is to share this. In all honesty, this kind of pleasure’s still shiny-new to Sans, too. Grillby makes a soft, shuddery noise when Sans’s permeable magic oscillates pleasantly through their souls, again when Sans reassures him that it’s a little scary sometimes, but it’s good. He _knows_ it’s good. Sans turns his skull to taste again, nuzzles at Grillby’s head tenderly as he presses his ass back into the give of the mattress. He holds Grillby in place and lifts his own hips to thrust shallowly a few times.

“how’s that?” he whispers, but Grillby’s not sure. Feels like it usually does, and it’s hard to get a handle on what Sans is trying to give him. Like attempting to identify a hidden object by touch, or figuring out what three smells happening at once are. Sans tries a curving motion, pressing Grillby down to into it. Grillby makes a softer noise, and what he feels nudges a bit closer to being Sans’s pleasure.

It gives Sans an idea. He cradles their souls carefully inside his body, then mimics the movements of how he fucks Grillby when his magic spills over, even if it’s not doing it yet. Grinds in slow circles instead of thrusting, moving to rub imaginary spend between them. Sans fantasizes its taste as (sans-wants-to-come) from earlier, gives that to Grillby through his touch to create a pleasant association. A path towards something new, paved by one of the pleasures Grillby is accustomed to feeling with Sans inside him. Then he starts tilting his pelvis with each little circle to thrust in and out, because that’s what Sans’s body likes right now.

Pleasure lights up between Sans bones, and Grillby fails to suppress a surprised moan. Sans shuts his sockets with a smile. There we go.

Sans takes his time showing him some different ways to feel, because there are lots of ways to enjoy this. It’s not like Grillby hasn’t pleasured Sans this way before; Sans has let him know what it’s like. But this is an exploration of Grillby feeling how he wants to feel, and finding where it overlaps with Sans’s preferences. He holds his own soul steady like an open channel between them, simultaneous knowing-feeling as it happens. Sans touches alone and takes the lead. Sans’s permeable magic cradles Grillby’s soul carefully inside Sans’s body, coaxes him open until every last twitch and flutter is felt equally between them.

Sans’s pleasure becomes _their_ pleasure. It’s not like what they’ve done before because they’re sharing it.

Turns out what Grillby likes best is being held tight against hard bones, steady movement that ascends slow but ceaselessly, cold friction that creates a thin layer of smoke between them. Sans can taste the echo of his own pleasure fed back into him there, and he cries out and spends hard for real this time. He doesn’t slow like he usually would; Grillby likes how it feels to just fuck into it, slicking it away into smoke until it sparks and prickles deliciously.

“god, that’s good,” Sans pants, delighted at the difference. “yeah, taste me...” Sans spending in his body spices the strange with the familiar, helps Grillby relax further into the experience. Sans’s hands encourage, but they’re not really guiding anymore...seems like the uphill jog is what Grillby likes, and he’s speeding up quickly. Sans brings their souls as close as he can inside them. Even in this state, jostling and groaning and panting into each other, Grillby trusts Sans to keep them safe. Safe, and close.

(_So close_.)

Grillby makes short whumping sobs into Sans’s body as he chases their pleasure, his breath a ragged, fluttering pressure like an inferno stealing the oxygen from a room. Sans’s magic spills over again, and he wants to come for real this time. He’s so close.

_Oh, please_, Sans thinks in the turbulent silence of his own soul. _Please, just let me have this. _He doesn’t know who he’s begging.

Sans and Grillby hold each other tight as they can, then fling themselves right off this unknown cliff together.

Sans’s climactic cry wrenches deep and defeated as he feels his magic emerging along with his peak.

His sockets spill over even as he winds into himself, a balmy ribbon soothing the burn of shame. Nevertheless, his arms guide the barely-held-together chaos of Grillby’s body through the motions of climax, a bone harbor in the worldquake of sensation. Sans holds him secure, keeps their bodies safe as he thrusts the scouring maelstrom of pleasure apart to share evenly between them. He gasps in air… and it exits as a high, relieved moan as strangely warm drops patter down on his ribs from inside.

Sans’s magic beads up and rolls away from Grillby’s soul without ever penetrating, falling through his body like a merciful rain on his parched spine. Sans’s choice was interfered with, and his body can’t help that. But Grillby can make his own choice, and he _has_. Sans keeps Grillby's body from melting in a cage of bone as pleasure scours him bare; Grillby’s soul is steady as a boulder as Sans’s invisible scar bleeds innocently around him.

Grillby is adamant, and his soul won’t accept unwilling magic. The sharpness eases, and their movements draw it out. Sans can only hiccup softly under the tide of protective triumph he knows lacing Grillby’s awed pleasure. They’re still fucking because it feels so good, moving and panting in the sweat and smoke, in the sweetly burning taste of each other.

Sans trembles under a torrent of new desire. He can’t put it into words, but the magic he pushed was still _for_ Grillby. It came out because of him and what they shared. He knows Grillby doesn’t want it in his soul...and Sans doesn’t either. But….but Grillby made it okay that it came out. Grillby’s soul said no because Sans’s body couldn’t. Said it _for_ him, and let magic wrung out unwilling fall harmlessly to the bed. But there are _other_ ways he can have it, a way he knows Grillby likes. No right or wrong way to share yourself.

“take it,” Sans gasps breathlessly. “want you to...”

Grillby lets out another shocked moan, quivering like he might melt in Sans’s embrace. Grillby’s unbound form might be too hot, and he won’t hurt him. He _won’t_. He hesitates still, but Sans floods him with another rush of desire, of just how much Sans wants to give him. Sans shakes and hums; whoever stole Sans’s magic _can’t have it_. No one can except who Sans allows, and he wants to allow it. Grillby tries not to melt...and then he does, but only a little. A part of him sinks through to take Sans’s magic, to taste it like Sans wants him to.

A breathy whoosh shudders through Grillby’s entire body, coolness sucking in from outside to pull toward the center. He...loosens all over with a soft little _whump_. Like Sans does sometimes when it’s as good as it gets, when the tension just winds itself out and leaves him limp. A flicker, and then a tiny tendril of flame brushes tenderly against Sans’s soul inside his ribcage.

The orgasm had been mind-meltingly good.

This….

….

…….is _better_.

Grillby is….. just gonna….. _chill_ out riiight here for a bit, if that’s _c__o__ol_. And then….he gives Sans just a teeensy bit of what he’s feeling. The indescribable richness of what he’s tasting, the frozen-kerosene liqueur that _becomes_ the fuel that keeps him alive. Grillby giggles faintly; he’s a fiery love machine running on pure sex-o-line.

Sans heels dig hard into the mattress. He’s slightly lifting them on shaking legs as he fucks into Grillby with utter abandon, lost in the burnt-sugar haze around him, _inside_ him. Grillby’s lambent, sleepy head lolls on his shoulder, all smiles and bliss as Sans holds it and rubs their faces together. Sans’s genitalia sheds hard, and a soul-deep groan squeezes him dry.

Grillby hums with contentment, waggles sloppily on bones and revels in Sans enjoying his body. What Sans let him take burns slow like green wood, less sweet than his spend and so much more complex. Like every strange place he’s lapped from Sans’s bones after his little trips, all at once. He braces with a hand to stay in place, caresses Sans with the other and just ….goes lax on top of him to be jiggled and cuddled, loved and cherished and fucked.

Funny…. isn’t it. For the first time in his life, Grillby...doesn’t really _want_ anything. Because he already _has_ it. This….is exactly what he wants. Everything is perfect.

He’s _satisfied_.

Even filled with his touch, Grillby forces out a single, soft word through the overwhelming taste of Sans’s most sexual self.

_...Sans…._

With a hoarse groan squeezed through his teeth, Sans comes again. His magic stays inside. It stays, but Grillby can’t handle a second climax. His soul dissolves out from inside Sans’s body, and it’s just another peaceful shade of ecstasy. Sans cradles his arm low on Grillby’s hips to hold him there, and Grillby nuzzles at his jaw in contentment as Sans fucks him into incandescent jelly.

He must have passed out after that, since the next thing he really remembers is Grillby gently waking him.

“…hnn?”

…_.I have to go out for a minute_, Grillby explains patiently. He never leaves Sans while he’s asleep. _...There’s a fight. _Sans huffs and snortles, split-second checking the main room before putting his tertiary vision right back on the machine. Oop. Sure is. Redbird and…Annie? What the fuck? Are duking it out. Seems mostly for show considering they didn’t even open an encounter, which is why Grillby has to go break it up. They’re messing up the furniture.

“k,” Sans manages, and Grillby gives him a last unhurried caress, like Sans will always be more important than furniture. Sans gives him a sleepy smile as he floats into his clothes, and it stays after the fire door shuts behind him. Sans rubs the extra-soft blanket Grillby provided on his bones in anticipation of another round...then his mood sours, because he remembers his phone going off at some point during the festivities.

The message from Red’s one of the image puzzles Sans often sends to people. It solves for “success” from one direction, and “fuck you” from the other.

Welp.

It’s good to know it worked. Turns out he _can_ keep an eye on the machine without the reminder of Red hovering in the back of his mind the whole time. It just takes a bit of concentration, or extra distraction. Sans crosses his forearms over his face and sighs. Fuck, that’s upsetting. Not only having an unwilling quasi-voyeur, but to know it was probably his unwitting fault. Red can take a long walk off a short pier as far as Sans cares, but...he wouldn’t ever knowingly do _that_ to _anyone_.

Sans grunts in displeasure. He’s probably going to have to talk to Aaron about this. He knows Aaron can feel all his bodies separately, but has the same kind of...awareness...when things happen. Might even be a handjob in it for him if he can actually keep his fucking trap shut for a change. Sans plays back his memories, noting there were only...huh. Two times he didn’t just get up and leave because Aaron wouldn’t stop winking and making commentary on Sans’s performance.

At least now he also knows maybe why he feels so weird and pissed off all the time…because Red’s emotional state’s affecting him, too. (And you, and Papyrus. Gives Sans the impulse to check on his brother, but he probably wouldn’t appreciate it right now.)

But Sans is too smart not to know a fair amount of this is coming from his good old fashioned self, too.

Sans takes his arms away from his face, stares at the familiar puzzle of pipes and tubs of Grillby’s stills as he sidles up to the tangle of awful feelings created by Red’s little revelation. He touches his sternum hesitantly...then huffs in in quiet disappointment. Nope. He’s gonna have to wait, spend some time _alone_-alone with that mess. “That mess”, of course, being Sans.

He stares at the stupid, dusty, apparently unchanged machine in his old basement under Snowdin some more. Even more frustrating is that Sans won’t be able to figure out what they’re really up to until he can go back to the machine himself, find out where they really came from. Look for some kind of hint. Sans sucks in a breath, then splits his tertiary vision the way he wishes he could all the time without getting so dizzy he can’t even walk. Red’s just sitting like a total load on his couch, watching his brother play projected games again. Like he’s so fucking innocent.

He fixed the machine. He made it do something to bring them here, so he must know what it’s actually _for_. He knows where they came from. He _remembers_….he must know what _Sans_ is actually _for_.

Rather than following that particular rabbit down its killing-rage filled hole yet again, Sans rubs his face, sighs and sits up. The fighting noises have ended, and Grillby’s got on the mix he plays to chill everyone’s asses out. He checks quickly again; turns out Annie needs someone to talk to, and Grillby’s always there for what everyone needs. Guess her cousin’s third gen just took off stripes. Sans fumbles for his phone from where he cast it adrift in the blanket sea once more. He pulls out his trombone, sets it to his teeth.

When Grillby comes back a few hours later, he just lies down fully clothed across the foot of the rumpled, magic-soaked bed and listens. Watches Sans’s fingers cradle the slide, his skull tilted lovingly against the bell tube as he plays along with Grillby’s chillout mix. Every once in a while Grillby reaches out and passes a hand through the bedding, slow and sensual. Flickers as he takes in what they’ve left in it.

Sans’s eyes get tight with anticipation as Grillby rolls on his front and makes his slow, slinky way toward him. Sans controls his breathing, and the notes keep flowing out. A new game: he keeps playing even when Grillby makes his way between his femurs, uses that mouth-opening on his bare pubis. Sure, the notes meander. Sans adds little flourishes along with the music already playing in the bar, but he keeps it up without faltering until hot fingers press slowly inside him, his hitching gasp creating a discordant little squeak.

“fuck,” Sans rumbles, sliding down the headboard and letting his instrument fall to the side. He reaches down and grabs Grillby’s collar instead. “c’mere,” he rasps demandingly, gives it a tug. And Grillby comes, his hand below still meticulously working whatever this is open and wet. His clothed heat rubs rough against Sans’s bones, delicious friction against Sans’s still-naked body. The buttons catch and scrape against his ribs, and it’s like a switch got flipped. Sans lifts his chin and yanks him down by the collar in his bone fist, shouts when a hard nip makes sparks fly down inside his body.

“gimme somethin’ else,” he mutters, his other hand scrabbling down at Grillby’s body. “keep em on,” he demands, then just rips open the front of his pants and yanks his shirt out of them, “d...do the….yeah, _make_ somethin’ n fuck me with it.”

Grillby’s fingers slide out, but one stays to hold something open. Sans’s sockets clack shut, and his overwhelmed groan vibrates through locked teeth as something searing hot and ruinously thick opens him. Sans pants and squirms, but Grillby holds him. Keeps pushing inside on the near-frictionless slide of magic on magic, and there’s so much it actually takes a bit of the wind out of Sans’s frantic sails. Just for a minute, though.

Sans arches back shuddering, loves the new music of his own wheedling sigh and Grillby’s lusty crackle. Firm heat presses against the outside of whatever showed up in Sans’s pelvis, roiling-hard pressure stuffing the inside til it creaks. _Fuck_, that’s big. Too much, and he wants _more_. Sans whimpers and cusses as Grillby rocks into him, nipping hard at his collarbone to keep him entertained as he works Sans through the burn. Hard buttons and knots from his clothes scrape and catch deliciously on Sans’s bones. He squeezes his legs tight to feel the grate of his pocket-rivets on the sensitive insides of his femurs. Does it again, makes it dig in until he hisses. Grillby goes smoothly from easing him open to fucking him, so deep on the upswing Sans makes a soft little cough.

Sans yanks hard on Grillby’s vest, hears it rip. “c’mon!” It’s a growling shout as he yanks some more and tries to buck up hard, trying to impale himself on what Grillby made for him. Tries to make it _rough_, get that _too much_ feeling. Make it _hurt_. Grillby leans up without stopping, holds Sans’s hips tight-still and makes a low, amused crackle. He waits til Sans peeks, still panting and pulling at him.

…_.__**No**_, Grillby whispers cruelly from that white-hot, merciless face. _….No, like __**this**__... _He pushes slow and deep, keeps the same steady pace. Makes Sans really _feel_ himself flutter with the strain of taking it all._ ….__Just like this…__Yesss…_

Sans weeps with frustration and something else, something soft and unbearable and beautiful. Because it’s _already_ too much, and his soul _already_ aches so sweet and sharp he might die. Might just dust right here. Grillby takes his magic, holds him down and keeps doing exactly what he’s doing.

Sans takes a deep, angry breath and tightens his genitalia around Grillby as hard as he can. But it’s too slick, he can’t keep this out. It just keeps going inside over and over. The air snarls out of him, and he claws at Grillby until cloth tears again. Can’t grab it, can’t _keep_ it, can’t do anything but _take it_ as it fucks him open. Sans sucks in another breath and holds it, shuddering with tension as he tightens again, tries to _hold __on_ with all his might. He’s so focused on how it feels, when Grillby gives him a sudden, hard thrust it hits him like an aneurysm. Sans comes around the second one with a devastated, wracking wail.

In the end, Sans manages to tear all of Grillby’s clothes not merely off, but apart.

That’s fine. Sans has been trying to get him to change his outfit for about eight fucking years now anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm a little behind on answering comments, but i will answer them all like always! <3


	14. Ctrl+J

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know. The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out.  
But something forces you to anyway.”  
—James Baldwin  
https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2994/james-baldwin-the-art-of-fiction-no-78-james-baldwin
> 
> Low – Dust On The Window  
https://youtu.be/QWYcVUUWBb4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter opens with a flashback to Fellverse awfulness, including the immediate aftermath of sexual violence. 
> 
> **[sexual violence, sex work, brief dubcon, murder]**

Red tries to whine in his sleep, but he’s still not _Red_ when he sleeps. He’s cursed to be Sans again, stuck in the same fucking place he always gets stuck.

It’s Sans’s breath that hitches because he’s trying to clean the dust out of his pelvis, but that shit always gets everywhere. He’s also trying not to cry like a dumbass, since it’s his own fault for not waiting til they get off him to kill them. But the fact that he _can’t_ until they’re done makes him too antsy for it, makes him lash out the split second he’s _able_ to.

Just because Gaster can’t do this anymore doesn’t make his horrible, disgusting, broken body stop responding every goddamn time one of his marks hurts him. Tries to get more than they paid for, and of course the piece of worthless garbage his consciousness is chained to makes sure they get it.

Sans’s breath hitches with panic he ignores as he keeps wiping, but there’s always more. And he can’t bend enough to really _see_ the way he needs to, not with his floating ribs fused to the upper ones. He keeps at it, tertiary vision splitting and splicing, fractaling infinitely into the pores of the bone. In his sacroiliac joints, his sacral foramina, his… Sans freezes as someone steps on the bottom-most stair, along with something heavy.

Fuck. Annie’s coming up now it’s quiet again. A quiet that fell too suddenly, and Sans wishes he could kill that fucker again. Not enough to do what he did, of course he had to go and get fucking _loud_ about it. Sans’s back is turned, but not by the time she makes it to the doorway. She’s carrying a tub of hot water. Small to her, big to Sans.

“Brought you something,” Annie rasps, tired to the bone. Heh.

“yeah?” Sans stares at the wall, unimpressed. “what’s it gonna cost me?”

Annie lets out a grunt of humorless laughter. “Consider it a freebie. That fuckhead won’t be back to tear any of us up now, will he?”

Sans grunts. “won’t be back ta fill your pockets neither.”

“There’ll always be more,” she says. Just a fact.

“okay.”

Annie brings the tub of water in and sets it down. It’s heavy as fuck, but Annie’s the biggest bun he’s ever met. Sans waits, but she doesn’t leave.

“you waiting for something?”

“I can help.”

“don’t need your fuckin’ help.”

“I didn’t say that you did.”

Sans sighs. There’s something going on, and the only way to figure it out’s to play along.

“what, suddenly you gotta bone to pick with me? got a hankering ta go spelunking in all my lil nooks n crannies?”

Her laugh has a low rasp that makes his foci dart back to her face. Oh. Well. Ain’t _that_ interesting. Annie says stuff sometimes, but Sans always figured she was blowing smoke up his pelvis. The interest in her eyes is real.

“Do you want to find out?”

Sans huffs, lets his grin soften into a smile. He saunters over and sits his bare ass down in the tub with a clack, hides the flicker of his eyes as she kneels down far enough away that he doesn’t flinch, then approaches low. He decides not to get offended at being handled like a wilting flower, considering the circumstances. The water’s nice and hot, smells good like she put some soap in there. The kind you can soak in to get the stink off, don’t even have to rinse. Expensive. A lot of people want it, but not many people can make it.

You’re allowed to sell stuff like that; only food’s illegal. Everyone does it anyhow, although not all of them make a high art out of it like Muffet’s racket. Can’t hide out there without coughing up rent, and Sans always needs a bolt-hole. You can sell all sorts of things as long as it’s nothing meant to eat. Soap and furniture, like some people can make. Shit from the dump you fixed, clothes you made. Sans sells whatever his nimble hands can do so he can pay when he _has_ to, and one of those things is what the pile of dust in the corner said he wanted.

Annie plucks out a cloth and wets it, smiles all sultry and starts rubbing his bones with it, trots out some bunny gossip for sauce. Sans has to suppress a shiver; it feels that good, and no one’s ever done this for him before. Always had to clean up after himself, and after his brother, too. Magic seethes across his skull, and Annie huffs in amusement when she sees it. Huh. If Annie wants a freebie for a freebie, Sans is starting to feel pretty damn inclined to give her one.

What Sans and Annie do isn’t legal or illegal, because it isn’t anything at all. The only people who ever talk about it are the ones that do it, and they don’t talk about it unless it can’t be avoided. It’s not safe of course, but this is one of the safer ways to go about it. Always take them to the same place, surrounded by people in the same boat you’re in. Problem is, some marks change their mind about what they want once they’ve got it, or think they do.

Sans can read faces like books, and he doesn’t need Judgement to know whoever he’s looking at’s a piece of shit. But LVvy monsters don’t know what the fuck they want one second to the next. And it’s not always obvious from relative LV if a given monster’s gonna snap, or if they’re just gonna enjoy what they paid for and bid a good fucking day.

Annie rubs his knees with the cloth and rambles on about spats going on among the buns, a few of her cousins tearing shit up over tit for tat stuff, another that won’t stop having kids long enough to take care of them. Sans doesn’t notice as that cloth gets closer to his pelvis, but he should have.

And then her little finger hooks right in his pubic symphysis like it means business; Sans jerks and grabs her arm, water sloshing out with the rapid reaction.

Down low; too slow.

And that’s what slowed him down enough for her to catch him, of course. The fucking _water_. She’s not _hurting_ yet, so he can still stop her…but she doesn’t do anything else. She just waits, and Sans gets to decide whether yanking her away will make it worse or better. Sans huffs rage out through a flared nasal cavity, grips her wrist tight enough that he shakes. His hard claws curl viciously, bruising the wrist he can’t even get his phalanges all the way around, but it doesn’t stop her from feeling something happening in there. His eyes feel hot as coals as he raises them to her face, and he knows murder’s written all over his.

She knows.

Son of a bitch. She _knows_.

“I knew you had something in there,” she confirms rawly. Doesn’t even try to get her arm back. Sans wants to pull it away so bad he’s shaking, but it’ll _hurt_. And he _just_ got his fucking pelvis clean. “It hurts you just as much as anyone.”

“what?” Sans rasps. That’s not what he was expecting. Which was more along the lines of dusting someone he wouldn’t have to clean out of his pelvis afterwards, following some kind of blackmail pitch. The downside being having to kill someone he actually fucking likes, unjustified.

“I smelled it on the mattress,” she says, and Sans flinches. He’d asked to borrow Annie’s berth a while back when Sans’s usual room wasn’t suitable for much the same reason it is now, and she’d actually fucking let him. He thought he’d cleaned it well enough, but he was so concerned with the dust he’d missed something else. “I won’t tell anyone.”

“yeah? ‘m thinkin’ i should make sure you keep that promise.”

Annie sighs, looking unimpressed. “They try anyways, Sans.”

“yeah, a few of em _try_,” Sans grates through those perfect teeth she says she likes so much. “you gonna make it so they _all_ do?”

“Is that skull of yours empty as a fucking leftover snail shell?” Annie asks, disbelieving. She lets out a long, slow breath. “This is my place. I keep it _clean_.”

Sans feels his foci flicker gently; that’s why he’d been so focused on getting out the dust. That’s the rules. No dust at Annie’s. And he _knows_ that, but… “People talk. Some say not to come here because you won’t leave again. Might have been some complaints.” Sans flinches again. She means people who wanted to bring marks here, people who do what he and Annie do...they were saying Sans is ruining their reputation by killing his marks, even if he’s not gaining LV and no one can prove jack shit. Scaring away trade and hurting their income. Annie’s place, so she decides if thats true or not.

He can’t break Annie’s gaze. It feels hot, searing. Maybe that’s why his sockets are leaking red-tinged magic down into the water.

What a drip.

“But I know _you_ wouldn't do something like that if you didn’t have a _reason_.”

And just that easy, she lets him go. Like it’s nothing, like he couldn’t just kill the shit out of her now if he wanted. Like no matter what other people do to them, they won’t do that to each other.

And then she takes him into her arms, because he’s fucking bawling. She wrings the cloth and puts it to his face, so his rage and humiliation doesn’t stink up her clothes, or the whole room for that matter. “I know you’re too little to stop them,” she whispering, and Sans doesn’t correct her. “I was on my way up, but...” she sighs, presses the cloth and rubs the back of his heaving ribcage with her enormous, warm hand. She turned back and went to get the tub when the noise stopped like it did, cruel laughter crumbling into the air for a haunted second out of a dusted throat. “I’m not about to kick you out when it’s my fault. My hearing’s not what it used to be since the fire, and my leg… I took too long. _I’m_ supposed to keep you safe.”

“don’t s-say shit l-like that,” Sans hiccups. “’s not our fault.” He’s almost glad her hearing’s not what it used to be, or she’d have been able to hear Sans coming. He can’t help that part either, but it still makes him want to die. “was h-_his_ fault. got what he h-had comin’, now he can’t do it t’anyone else.” Sans tears dry, his voice growing leaden with finality. “some folk’s’re even _littler_ than me.”

“I have kids _too_, dumbass,” Annie whispers against his skull, and Sans tenses hard. No one’s supposed to know about Papyrus. Sans doesn’t check on him, even though he wants to. Don’t want to get the kid’s hopes up. “I won’t tell anyone,” Annie adds, but he doesn’t relax much.

The thought of Papyrus tugs the fishhook in his soul, holed up with their stuff somewhere. Safe for _real_, not like here.

(Alone.)

Papy’s _safe_, far away from all of _this_. Too good for this disgusting shithole, too good for this world. He doesn’t need to be around any of it. Around Sans either, if he can help it. Staying away’s the best thing he can do for that kid.

(<strike> Waiting for him, that bright-smiling skull popping up as soon as Sans gets there with a gasp. </strike> <strike> D </strike> <strike> esperately pretending he wasn’t crying, even though they both smell it soaking into </strike> <strike> the wad of </strike> <strike> Sans’s clothes he’s got clutched to his tiny chest. </strike> <strike> ) </strike>

Papyrus is safe for real in his little hidey-hole that only Sans and spiders can get in or out of. Sealed right up tight with all the shit that matters. The book, the clothes Sans sells, the broken shit from the dump he’s trying to fix. He won’t say anything about the toothmarks on them. Papyrus has a few things he can’t help, either; Sans just repairs what he can without a word.

(<strike>“</strike><strike>B-BACK SO SOON, SANS? IT H-HASN’T EVEN BEEN A WEEK YET! A tiny little caw, forced out between renewed sobs.</strike>)

He should be back there. His brother needs him, but...but Sans is… Sans feels like shit. Disgusting and helpless, pelvis always full of dust. Papyrus shouldn’t have to see him like this. Shouldn’t have to ask his brother why he _smells_ like that, what those _marks_ are, why whenever he sleeps he wakes up screaming and holding his--

Sans nearly starts crying again when Annie interrupts his spiraling thoughts, relieved someone’s here to do that.

“I won’t tell anyone,” she says again. “I promise.”

And all Sans can think about is how much he wants to feel better, even for a few minutes. To feel something good, because everything feels like shit all the time. Annie’s breath catches as Sans’s fingertips slide up teasing through her fur, finding that sensitive spot between her jaw and ear. Gives her a hint of just how talented his hands can be. For her, if she’s interested.

Annie just lifts Sans out of the tub, and into the plush, clean towel she pulls out of her drawer-size apron pocket. Rubs him all over, says he’s clean and white like the towel. No one’s ever washed and dried him like this, polishing him up like something valuable, something important. Something she wants to fix up and get a nice price for. He doesn’t suppress the shiver that takes him this time, and he doesn’t look away from her sloe-eyed invitation.

He doesn’t think about anyone waiting for him.

<strike>(That harsh, sweet little voice piping up, “I </strike><strike>_KNEW_</strike><strike> YOU WOULN’T LEAVE ME ALL BY MYSELF HERE FOREVER!”</strike>)

Sans’s breath shudders out, and he slides his arms around Annie’s neck.

“Think it’ll come out for me?” Annie murmurs invitingly. Sans’s skull shakes a negative, the movement tiny but adamant. He hates that fucking thing, wishes he _didn’t_ have it instead of just pretending he doesn’t. If he could cut it out for good without dying, he would.

“lemme do you,” he whispers softly. “jus’ hands,” he hurries out quickly at Annie’s suddenly flat expression. She already knows he can’t open his mouth, can’t do it that way. “freebie, remember? hands is what they pay for. th’other shit’s not for sale, so i can’t really mark it down, huh?”

He tries a hesitant smile; Annie can always tell when he’s smiling for real. She says it’s pretty, and he knows she’s full of shit but he still appreciates the effort. Annie leans in and scents him; nothing yet, but maybe she wants to change that. She wraps him in the towel again, picks him up and takes him to the bed.

The bed’s clean, of course. The room’s undisturbed except for the pile of dust half on the floor, half on the table. No signs of a struggle; never is. They never believe Sans when he tells them they’re not gonna like what happens if they don’t stop, because he doesn’t fight. They don’t know it’s only because he can’t. Same old song and fuckin’ dance every time.

“you sore or anything?” Sans rumbles quietly, rubbing his bones on her soft clothes, softer fur.

“A little,” Annie admits to Sans’s cervical vertebrae after too long a pause.

“no problem,” Sans says lightly. She shudders as he combs her inner thigh with delicate fingertips, then gasps as they slither directly where they need to go. Usually he’d press with his wrist to expose her entrance, but if she’s sore that doesn’t feel great. He keeps his touch shallow and light, dipping in just enough to find her sweet spot. It firms right up under his tender beckoning, and he can tell she’s surprised at how quick his touch gets her going.

“Wait,” she pants softly. “Go a little s-slower...”

“don’t wanna dither ‘f yer already sore,” he whispers.

She shakes her head, still tucked into the space between his jaw and shoulder. “I want it to last.”

Sans lets his breath out slow. He can relate to that. “…okay.”

He slows down just a little, lets his touch turn teasing instead of insistent. Annie huffs softly at Sans’s bare neck, his shoulder. Sans tenses when she moves, but...oh. All she does is wrap those big, furry arms around him. Holds him close and doesn’t do anything else, not even when Sans gets turned on by it. She takes her time scenting him though, hot little nuzzles that don’t quite touch his bones.

“you…” Sans makes a faint little click in his skull. Goes nice with the wet, slick-click noise of his fingers in her. “you like that?”

“So sweet…” It’s soft and fervent. “Good as a bun…”

A tight exhale pushes its way out of him. He gives in and presses his face to her neck, too.

She comes, and he keeps going because she wants him to. Because, strangely enough..._he_ wants to. She says other nice things. She likes his smile, the way he moves, his lovely bones. Says stuff like she thinks about him, even when he’s not there.

She comes again, and then she’s touching him back. Not grabbing, not _hurting_. Nice, like she cares about him.

Sans feels his pelvis get hot inside, starts to feel full.

_No._

He chokes off a whimper, reaches down and holds his pubis like he’s trying to keep something in. Because he kind of is. He doesn’t like how bones feel on there, and for some reason he ends up holding the fabric of Annie’s skirt and pressing it to his pubis. Wraps it around and squeezes, careful not to hurt. Just steady pressure like he’d put on wounded flesh, and it...it stops.

Annie ignores his panicked breathing, and for some reason that really helps steady it back out.

“c’n i use this?” he hears himself whisper.

“It’s fine.” Annie’s hand is warm, cupping his occipital bone gently. “It’s for the laundry anyways.”

“hold me,” Sans breathes desperately, her fur capturing the humidity of his breath around his face, absorbing the magic that leaks from his scrunched-shut sockets. “don’ lemme go...” He’s rubbing the soft fabric on his pubic tubercles, ghosting over that thrumming bud where his pubic bones join together, the dense core of his body. His bones _stay_ just bones even though it feels better and better.

She holds him gently and steady while he shivers with it, petting and whispering and oh god, it’s so _good_. It’s the best thing he’s ever felt. A sweet, earthy scent fills the air around them, and Sans feels wet heat soaking into the fabric. He moans, but it’s wordless. _Don’t come out_, he prays silently. _Stay just like that, just _let_ me…please…._

“Is it good?” She holds him tight, like she already knows how good it is. Like she wants him to have this too, but Sans can’t answer. He just mewls and rubs and pants, squirming in her embrace and begging his body to let him just _have_ something for a change, to feel something good for once.

_...please...i’m so tired of _ wanting _ it….just let me _ have _ it..._

The shittiest thing about this not-a-dream is no matter how many times it happens, he never actually gets to _come_.

Sans wakes up and becomes Red again, red again. Cursing and shaking, on the verge of weeping with desperation. Same ol fucking song and dance every time.

He sweats and jerks and fumbles out his trusty little napkin, tries to give himself what he woke up before getting. No use. It’s never as good as that promise of annihilation on the edge of consciousness, that building peak that leads to the end of pain, the end of everything. It never stops, just keeps on going, keeps on _wanting_. He never gets to rest. He just...wants some fucking _rest_.

Even after he knocks the third one out, this feeling won’t go anywhere. His bones burn, eyes jittering in the searing griddle of his skull. Red builds up his courage and looks for an excuse, but….you and Sans are just sleeping. This isn’t coming from anywhere but his own mind, body, and soul. But he keeps looking, can’t stop picking at it.

His brother doesn’t sleep if he can help it. He’s downstairs playing that game thing Monster Kid showed him. Tubes and Cubes.

Edge is finding all sorts of new hobbies. Probably a good thing.

Red’s hobbies are sleeping without getting any rest, wishing he was dead, and pretending he can’t feel how much Sans is loved. He can, of course. All that honey, none for Red. Not that he deserves any, but he could do without the thorn of someone else’s love lodged his soul, tugging at all the severed nerves where an actual person would be if Red still was one. He lopped that limb off a long time ago, but it aches like bitch now.

Red picks at the wound of his other self, like all those times he could have done something good, manifest. Like if he’d just left Annie’s place alone and kept taking his marks to alleys and behind snowbanks and shit. Better chance one of them might have squeezed just a smidge too hard, ended it there. Instead he’d made Annie break her own rules, dirtied up her place. After a while (more time than can be counted), seemed like someone dusted there every night because the marks stopped behaving. No matter how much you did, they wanted more. Or maybe they just wanted a fight in the first place, thought doing _that_ would make Red give them one.

What they _got_ was Red on a platter, then a big ol helping of recently fucking deceased for dessert. And eventually Annie’s became a worthless killhole just like every other fucking building underground. She even kept her promise; never told a soul about Papyrus until the little shit started walking right out of his boltholes himself. Everything that worked for a while unraveled eventually, everything unraveled for _everyone_ eventually, all the LV burning like a fuse through every last monster from the inside out. But Red’s not stupid. He knows where it started, who got her to bend the rules in the first place.

No such thing as safe places.

But this little slice of the ‘verse vibrates with emptiness where all that dust should be, no thick reek of fear and pain, no itch-scent of degradation. He thought it was just Sans at first, but _all_ these fucks walk around smelling like roses and wet dreams. They don’t care who gets a whiff, because they don’t have to. Makes Red want to kill something, tear this place apart, find the rotten sins he knows are...

What was that thing you said.

Don’t _have_ to do that sort of thing here….as long as he sticks to monster districts.

Red’s tertiary vision goes roaming now that he has some directions, a relentless search for a sore spot. He can’t help himself. It’s not fair he’s like this. There’s no justice _for_ him, none _in_ him. Nevertheless, Red’s restless agony goes searching for the space between what _should_ happen and what _is_ happening, hungry eyes like teeth itching for a canker to chew.

Turns out Red can add long walks in the breach to his list of hobbies.

Someone thought they made a friend, thought they were gonna get something good. Instead they got all their stuff taken or wrecked, shit beat out of them, lost a fight. Red lifts his ass to pull his shorts back up one-handed and crooked over his hips, sits up in bed with a tired grunt. He slips his feet in his battered sneaks, doesn’t bother tying them as he leans over for ballast.  
Stands up in that little apartment across town, everything broken and thrown on the floor. The shithead doesn’t see him, but the other one does. Too bad they’re already sobbing from a face distorted with fear and pain, or the shithead might have gotten tipped. Nothing can really be worse than what’s already happening, far as they’re concerned. From what Red can see, they’ve got a point.

Red holds his hand out and _pulls_. Takes a good look.

No one had to get hurt tonight. The other human was gonna give it up it anyhow, just wanted to smoke what was in that pipe first, then do a little bit of nothing much for the rest of the night. But the shithead doesn’t like anything he didn’t _take_, can’t enjoy anything someone else didn’t suffer to lose. Just did this because he believes he’s allowed to take what he wants, because he _can_. Money, drugs, lives, toys, shit he can sell, but what he likes to steal most is other people's _choices_. This isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last if Red doesn’t do what he already decided he would. LV’s 17, and that’s more than plenty.

A peaceful grin melts across Red’s scarred features at finding exactly what he expected. Feels good, feels organic.

The other human scrambles up as quick as they can, staggers and limps as they grab a few things. They eyeball the dark space of the encounter, but only to get around without touching it, and tear ass out of there as fast as they can. Which isn’t very; they sprung a few leaks and decorated the carpet, but they’ll probably live.

Red just smiles, closes his sockets and...yeah, there it is. The moment that always makes him finally feel patient, now that it’s here. But he can’t linger too long. Who knows who might suddenly decide to keep a _socket_ on him. Red keeps his shut, savoring each stolen second. The last of that jittery feeling melts away as a high, droning whine starts up behind him. Red gives a little shiver as the blaster goes off. Good ol’ trusty rusty, cleaning up _all_ the scum. Patience peels the shithead like a flogger, because he’s had this coming a long, _long_ time.

Red passes the turn, doesn’t even open his eyes as the fucker lunges at him. He barely has to duck, and it’s done.

A pull.

The barest brush.

It only works if you had it coming.

Then…

Red opens his sockets as the Judgement dissipates, and his sated grin twists sour at the edges.

….

He scratches the back of his neck under the collar, shuffles for a moment.

So.

Turns out Red kinda forgot about the part where humans leave a whole bunch of meat on the floor when they bite it.

He does the easy thing and calls his brother. It doesn’t take long, but…Red doesn’t sit even though he’d rather. None of the humans in the other apartments stir. Not like this shit’s noisy, but Red kinda wishes he had some tunes. He pulls his phone out again, tries to find where that music thing is, but...

Edge keeps his teeth shut as he opens the door like it’s his business to be here, assessing instantly and correctly as he closes it behind him.

“Did the other one See?”

Red nods short and jerky, eyes on the body.

“We need to-”

“_no,_” Red whispers quickly. “ain’t their fault.” Then he flinches, because that’s all it takes to give himself away. His brother knows him too well. Edge sighs, but it’s understanding instead of exasperation. Apparently Red’s not the only one that misses feeling useful.

Their new phones are just chock full of juicy tidbits, and they both know a dead human with no apparent _cause_ of death is a dead giveaway a monster did it, even if there’s no dust frosting the cake. Cause apparently these rosy-nose fuckers up and dust just by offing some bag of offal, often as not. They’ll still do it if they decide it’s necessary and unavoidable, and even though it might mean their end as well. In this unprecedented moment of peace inside his skull, Red’s willing to admit that takes some fuckin’ principles and commitment. ‘Over my dead body’ for real.

Speaking of literal bodies, Red sees a flash of steel as Edge walks over to the cooling carpet-con-carne that Red’s serving him. His brother casually runs his forearm along his mouth, teeth unfastening the straps on his glove in less than a second. Bites a fingertip to strip it off in the same motion, catching it to nimbly tuck in his belt. He winces as Edge’s bare hand touches the empty flesh; that can’t feel very good. But he does something that makes the blood move again, quickening a mockery of life in dead meat before steel flashes again to end it in a less immediately damning manner.

When it’s done Edge looks at the bloodied knife for a bracing moment, tilts his skull. Red realizes too late.

“boss--!”

Edge eats the knife with a shudder of distaste, utterly ignoring his brother's strangled objection. He sticks two bare fingers deep into his nasal cavity with a pained grunt, pulls them out quick and pukes the blood that was _on_ the knife out into the rest of the spreading puddle on the floor. Bleeds just like someone who is in the process of dying would under Edge’s hand, instead of leaking stingy molasses like the already-dead shithead should be. Cleaning it would leave an unmistakable pattern, as would the existence of the knife no matter where else he put it. Everyone will think another human did this now, and took whatever they used with them.

“he’ll prob’ly still know,” Red says quietly. They’re both Sans.

“THAT SOUNDS LIKE _HIS_ PROBLY-_LEM_.”

Red exhales in amusement at his brother’s tortured wordplay. Can’t really argue with that. Done’s done, and dead is dead. Edge’s foci comb over Red finely, making him shudder through a deep check. Red shuts his sockets and lets out a sweet, vocal sigh as it weighs his bones, soothing and familiar.

When he opens them Edge’s expression says it all; his bare fingers add, “Justified,” anyways.

Red’s LV hasn’t budged.

***

Papyrus turns away from the cold corpse and walks back to his hot mess of a brother, then gives in and just hauls Sans up into his arms, those recklessly untied sneakers dangling loosely. His bare hand slides up to caress his brother’s occipital bone, cups it like delicate porcelain. The killing tension’s gone, and Sans melts right into his embrace. They both want only to go home.

Papyrus calmly watches reality break apart into its fundamental bits to rearrange itself around them until they become where they want to be. His brother’s so lazy. It makes him smile. Papyrus always walks through it, because why stand still when you could be moving? He also _can’t_ do it without moving, but that’s irrelevant. Papyrus can move through the world freely, and Sans makes the world move for him. There’s a balance to that.

Sans sighs contently and nuzzles into Papyrus’s scarf between the needles. Papyrus is thinking about how normal people can only dream of such sloth; it makes him feel proud, and he’s still touching Sans’s bones.

“TELL ME A BEDTIME STORY,” Papyrus demands in his usual harsh caw as he walks upstairs to Sans’s bedroom. Sans’s skull is a pleasant, familiar weight against his collarbone. Feels like _home_.

“okay.”

“MAKE IT A GOOD ONE.” Papyrus disables the traps around his brother’s bedroom, then turns around to tie them back in place once they’re inside.

“okay.”

“I WANT THE _PUPPETS_, BROTHER,” he adds with mock-censure, delivering his precious burden to the rumpled bed he must have left almost an hour ago, with Papyrus none the wiser. He’s really going to have to put a bell in here.

“okay.”

They lie down with jackets and shoes still on, but Papyrus pulls the blanket up anyways. Nothing like a stimulating evening of justified homicide and evidence tampering to relax your standards. Sans cuddles right back into him and plops that sleepy skull right back on the collarbone still warm from its presence, and Papyrus needs a moment to close his eyes and just…._yes_. Yes, it’s...better. Nothing can ever be okay again, but this is farther away from bad than he’s accustomed to. He recovers, reaching for the book before Sans can tense again.

It’s right under Sans’s pillow, since this is their week to have it. Papyrus and Sans didn’t bring much with them when they left the originary torture pit that doomed them; just a few personal items and as much money as they could win or steal on short notice. This had been one of the former. They’ve had the book for longer than Papyrus can remember, the one thing besides Papyrus Sans wouldn’t sell off in a split second if it became convenient.

Unfortunately, it had collapsed right into the one already here once Papyrus had brought it out of their also-recently-stolen phone, so now they have to _share_ it. Sans is still trying to figure out how to compress his ungodly-huge collection of pornography enough to actually fit into his phone, but Papyrus has no doubt he’ll manage it somehow. That’s one tenet of this baffling 'verse than Papyrus is willing to accept the wisdom of.

It’s important to have hobbies.

At least their save files didn’t overwrite each other, and this program’s still here, too. Papyrus tries not to sigh as he navigates the matrix to SlorpMcCock11’s file. Sans wiggles in a silent snicker against him, so he obviously didn’t try hard enough. Out of sheer pettiness, Papyrus opens his own file under DEB BONeAIR. Sans tries to prod out the dollmaker, but Papyrus waves him off. He asked for a _story_, not watching Sans choose between four different noses for an hour. He spins open the figures for them to choose from, and Sans gives in with a short exhale.

All of Sans’s look very different from each other, and none of them are skeletons.

All of Papyrus’s are Papyrus wearing different outfits.

He never really know how much truth to read into Sans’s bedtime stories. Someone gets tricked, then they get hurt. Trust the wrong person, have to pay for it. As if Papyrus doesn’t already know all about life’s little unfairnesses, but oh, well. He’d asked for a story, and Sans really only knows the one. Someone hopes for something good, they get something bad instead. Papyrus’s puppets walk around after Sans’s with the dustpan at the ready; Sans’s puppets precede Papyrus’s with noisemakers and fanfare, clearing the way.

After a while, Papyrus uses his peripheral vision to gauge his brother’s expression. It’s definitely starting to blank out a little, getting sleepy. Time for the finale, then.

It’s always the same. Papyrus in the same outfit as the one he’s wearing now methodically and messily chainsaws all the characters to death in their beds. Confetti and applause ensue. Sans smiles beatifically, even giggling at one of the more egregious arterial sprays across a “Get Well Soon!” banner.

“I’LL STAY, I SUPPOSE,” Papyrus grates as if he begrudges it, which is his way of begging. Sans allows it, and he feels relieved. It’s been a while since Papyrus last slept…a few weeks, perhaps. Since he really _can’t_ without help, and he still needs Grillby to square up on what he _truly_ owes.

Papyrus hopes for a brief moment that Sans will sing for him, but it doesn’t happen. Hoping for too much, as always. He hopes this happens again soon anyways, even if there’s certain risks involved. This is the best he’s felt since they got here, and just imagining that flawless baritone weaving through Sans’s favorite arias makes him have to suppress a happy little shiver.

Papyrus’s phalanges still pet his brother’s skull as he fantasizes about _Nessun Dorma_, but as they drift absently toward the back of the collar, Sans tenses up defensively. Papyrus says a word with his teeth together, soft as he can. Sans relaxes, but only a little so Papyrus just takes his hand away entirely. He purloins one of Sans’s hands instead, brings the tips of his fingers to his mouth. Sans lets out a long, shuddering exhale, and his hard-coiled shoulders start to unwind again. He nuzzles back into Papyrus’s shoulder, content.

Papyrus puts the tip of Sans’s forefinger between his sharp, wedge shaped teeth. He pulls it down where the space narrows until it lodges there, then draws it through with a rasp. The calming taste of his brother’s bone dust fills Papyrus’s skull with its malevolently soothing lullaby. Sans shivers, relaxes even more.

Papyrus sucks his brother’s fingers sharp until he falls asleep, then follows him.

Neither dream of anything at all.


	15. A Different Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **[dissociation]**

Okay, so maybe deciding to ride to the beach party with Alphys and Undyne was a mistake.

It’s not that they’re not great. They _are_. So cute with each other, always being sweet and calling each other pet names like “Lizardlips” and “Sharkbite”.

It’s that they don’t really stop talking about sports, anime, sports anime or sports invented by anime long enough for you to ask how much longer, if it’s the usual beach you’re going to, whether there’s a bathroom at this beach, or any of the other questions you should have asked beforehand and didn’t think of until the drive began. They are, however, politely making sure that you can understand them, even when they literally say whole sentences at the same exact time. Because soul-understanding-thing apparently makes for great simultaneous infodumping.

You could message Papyrus to ask him, but um. You’re not 100% sure he won’t find a way to show up in the moving vehicle next to you to solve what he perceives as a problem, even though he should technically be also driving his _own_ car to the beach right now. (You don’t really want to find out today if Papyrus can _actually_ bilocate.) You’re used to Alphys the way she is at work or in the Hole, or at general family events. It hadn’t occurred to you that when they get going together you usually wander off, and that’s not actually an option in this scenario.

Luckily it turns out to be the same beach you usually go to. You know there’s a bathroom, and although they don’t stop talking as they unload the car, it’s a pretty familiar scenario to you now and you can just kind of get on with it. Papyrus pulls up in the middle of that with his load of spiky, leathery skeletons, because that was kind of the impetus behind Alphys’s suggestion. She and Undyne almost never get to see these two, and it seems to her like maybe they should get to know each other a little better.

What Alphys and Undyne might not realize is that _nobody_ really knows them. It is almost a tangible sensation of having no clue what makes them tick. It’s especially weird because they _do_ a lot of things and _say_ a lot of things, but--

Red meets your eyes and deepens his scowl at you, because you’re staring at him again. You wink, and his grin flattens for a second before he puts the neutral scowl back.

Edge’s face goes blank whenever he looks at Undyne, and you wonder if you should say or do anything about that. Red doesn’t react to them at all, but you kind of wonder if he’s just always at maximum misery capacity. But alas, Sans’s priorities are often contagious, so you opt to do nothing for the moment. And hey, if that changes, you can always do something later.

You do the same shit you always do at the beach. Bathroom, helping set up towels and the umbrellas Undyne needs sometimes although today’s kind of overcast, then standing and staring at shit while you wiggle bare feet into the sand. It’s like a cool little toe-ankle dance that makes your feet sink under your weight. The breeze is slightly cool but the sand is somehow still all toasty inside, and the temperature difference makes you shiver and grunt with passive, lumpy enjoyment. Sometimes if you get deep enough it gets cold again. When you look to the side, Sans is there.

“you always do that, huh?” he rumbles happily, like he usually does. “’s a good one?”

“Mmm,” you answer, letting your eyes shut for a minute to think about it. “Especially good, because it’s like the sun stayed in here for me, even if it’s not out right now.” You wiggle your toes underneath the sand, and he huffs in soft amusement. “Is it still there?”

“mm?”

“The sun,” you say, opening your eyes. “You can see it, right?”

He shrugs. “sure.” Not _yeah_. He must not feel like looking right now, then. Welp, no skin off your ass.

“what’s got you giggling now?”

“My ass skin,” you explain, and your eyes light on Red and Edge walking close to the water cautiously. Edge’s new-ish stilettos aren’t sinking into the sand at all, just looks like he’s walking across the floor of Grillby’s or something. Red shuffles alongside, visibly letting the loose terrain drag at his battered sneakers. They’re the same ones he showed up to this universe in, as far as you can tell.

“Do you think--”

Sans is gone, because you were going to ask him if he thinks Edge will buy his brother some new shoes.

You sigh.

Sans was, of course, invited. However, since Red and Edge are _also_ invited, he’s doing his “being around” thing. Which means he’s here, but only to deliver one-liners, be Papyrus’s greek chorus, or give you a thumbs up before being conveniently not present for comebacks or rebuttals. Well, whatever. Today’s happening, and it’s perfectly fine if Sans is cranky about it. You’re not, and that is also okay.

You wander over to the towels-and-umbrellas area, where Alphys is just chilling while Papyrus and Undyne start setting up a bunch of random crap they’ve toted here in their phones for one of their...sports, possibly. Things should get interesting before much longer.

“I still think this was a good idea,” you say to Alphys, blushing amiably in her sturdy one-piece swimsuit. She’d suggested a beach outing the day you and Sans had finally gone to her and asked her to take a look and see what you two had done with your souls. Results of the first round of exams are still pending, since it’s one of many medium-priority side-projects in addition to her actual work. Sans had made his cranky face when Alphys had suggested this (with your enthusiastic agreement to distract her from noticing), which just looks like he’s slightly sleepier than usual. You just know it’s cranky because you can kind of feel it. The cranky. Alphys also knew it was a cranky face, but that was just from context and because you suck at distracting her.

“S-sans isn’t t-t-too happy with it,” she mutters quietly.

“Well, yeah, but not everything is about Sans,” you point out reasonably enough. She chuckles.

“hey, now, ‘s a little harsh,” he says from slightly behind and to the side of you. You sigh, don’t even bother turning to look because he won’t be there when you do. Alphys just shakes her head.

“M-maybe it just feels like it now that t-there are m-m-more of him,” she smiles, watching Red hunch his shoulders and sweat at things.

Right now he’s sweating at his brother, Papyrus, and Undyne playing volleyball. There are a lot more baseball bats and garbage cans involved than you think might be technically necessary, but then again you don’t really watch anime or sports.

“I’m j-just bummed out that almost n-n-no one could m-make it,” Alphys continues, watching Edge screech like a tsundere belt sander while bashing in a metal suitcase with a bat. You can’t pick up on more than that since they’re downwind, and the wind’s whipping the sound out over the water. Red either heckles or encourages him from the way he’s gesturing; Papyrus wags his finger and says something that flattens Red’s filthy grin into sourness.

“Meh,” you shrug lightly, “people have kids and shit. This is like...the exuberant and youthful grownups.” You share a good snicker at that. “I think I’m going to some quality time with Evil Sans,” you sigh, giving Alphys a relaxed grin. “I’m having a good time,” you add as you approach the chaos together. She blushes more and gives you a jerky nod. Good deal. You hope she knows you’re not just saying that.

Red doesn’t acknowledge you as you approach and stop alongside him, which you more or less expected. Alphys keeps going to join her wife, who points her nonstop explanation of what’s happening in Alphys’s direction without actually interrupting herself. Alphys gets that goofy love-look back on her face, and it makes you smile, too.

“Hang out with me over there,” you say to Red, flopping an arm behind you vaguely without looking away from the shenani-cans. Papyrus is demonstrating how they can be worn as armor or picked up and used for maximum DPS, neatly dodging Edge’s bat-swipes. It escalates quickly after that.

“nope.”

“Come onnn,” you say in your best coaxing tone. “I have weird medieval soda that tastes like unsweetened bubblegum and want to ask you invasive personal questions.”

The still-flexible side of his mouth twitches. “not really selling me on it.” He’s lying.

“Everyone thinks we’ll fuck,” you offer kindly, and there’s the twitch again. You probably wouldn’t be able to read him so well if you hadn’t seen the big version of these expressions during the month or whatever he’d spent off his face at Grillby’s. Also the whole weird soul hints thing.

“Succumb to my charms and sit with me, give these poor bastards something to gossip about. I mean….look how fucking _bored_ they are.”

Papyrus and Edge working together at Pap’s little shop of flowers seems to have helped a lot with the _overt_ excruciating tension. A little. Enough that Papyrus is willing to sit on Edge’s shoulders while he jumps the double-long rope Papyrus is swinging as fast as he can. On sand, in heels. Red hunches and sweats a little more, swiping it from skull, to mitten, to pocket with a regularity not like a windshield wiper. His eyes tense slightly as he watches Edge, like he’s nervous about something.

You don’t ask him if he’s okay; although you’re pretty sure he can’t bite you, he might just commission his brother to do it. You look back over as Papyrus lets out a raucous, harsh laugh. Aww, it’s like he almost doesn’t want to kill his double for a second. Alphys is already on Undyne’s shoulders, but she’s just holding the stopwatch for now. Undyne’s frothing with enthusiasm, pumping an encouraging fist as Alphys causally ducks a flail of the rope Undyne forgot she’s holding. You try to figure out why Alphys is blushing so hard watching whatever that is, but then you notice where Undyne’s other hand is wandering.

“Don’t you want to bring some _joy_ to their colorless lives?” you coax one last time. Red almost winces at one of his brother’s more piercing shrieks of exertion. Then he grunts wordlessly, turns without looking at you and shuffles over to the blankets and umbrella station. You follow him, letting the social confidence flow through you as you groan your way into a seated position on the blanket. You have to work to find a spot between the hotglued bows and ruffles, since Undyne made it. There’s a few severed stuffed-toy heads on here for you to butt-dodge too, but mostly at the corners. Red already sat wherever, and you hide your smirk when he shifts subtly off a knotted wad of inexplicable yarn.

“_This_ here sodie-pop is one of the special ones I let turn to magic,” you say invitingly, waggling a bottle at him. It’s glass, which still isn’t allowed at the beach even when it’s magic glass. You do it anyways because you’re one of those terrible people who decides they’re special and immune to accidental breakage. “It’s not even a prank to make it look like you peed your pants.”

He ignores it.

“’s not like everyone doesn’t already know i can’t pee my pants,” he rumbles, staring out at the horizon.

“Yeah, which is why they’d know I did something that made it _look_ like you did. That’s why it’s funny,” you explain reasonably, resulting in another barely-visible twitch. You put the bottle he’s ignoring back away, open a non-magic one and drink.

“Sooo, how’s the crotch explosion been going?” you ask mildly.

Red narrows his sockets, the points inside turning towards you without moving his head. Then he scoffs, looks back at the ocean.

“he toldja bout it.”

“Yep,” you say, smiling. Both that trying not to include Red in the sex feelings had worked, and that Red had nevertheless tried to get ‘revenge’ with some kind of jackoff marathon. “He figured it out pretty much immediately, but he’s got the advantage of already knowing it’s a thing. He gets that you were trying to mess with him and that you were, um.”

Red waggles his fist and leers. You just tuck in a corner of your mouth and tilt your head at him, batting your eyelashes. His smugness sours.

“why the fuck do you keep acting like you give a shit?”

You bare the whites of your eyes at him incredulously. “Why do you think, dumbass?” He just makes a dismissive buttface.

“You know about timelines, since you managed to hop one,” you start, and he freezes with caution. You ignore it. “What me and Sans did was a way to find each other...” You narrow your own eyes and stare at the horizon, fill your mind with it to bypass the brain-mouth conduit and keep your secrets, “…no matter which one we happened to be in. Not like a...a magnet, or a compulsion. Like a hint, or...” You huff out an amused breath, turn to look at him. “Like what it says when you check someone. A little extra insight.”

You continue, since he’s interested now.

“I’m pretty sure the reason me and you are like this is because...even though it wasn’t _you… _It’s like if in your timeline, the monsters reached the surface, I was up there and found you, we got in a relationship for like three years and then we did the thing. Made a very specific yet also nonspecific...commitment to each other.”

He looks vaguely appalled. Well, whatever.

“It isn’t always like this, though. It’s strong because we activated it.”

“the fuck?”

That’s fair.

“We made the promise again, because something bad was going to happen. We thought it was...over.”

Red seems surprised by this, but you’re not about to upchuck Sans’s family drama all over the beach. Although you’re seriously starting to wonder how Red seems to know so little about what Frisk used to be able to do, when he’s the one who put the thing in the machine that made Sans able to predict when it would end.

“now you’re stuck with it?” he says hesitantly.

You laugh. “Of course not. It doesn’t feel like that to me at least, and it doesn’t feel like that to him.” You run your eyes over Red’s slumped posture, the defeated way he holds himself. It _looks_ exactly the same as Sans when he’s sleepy, but you’re still able to perceive a difference. It’s strange, but undeniable.

_He_ definitely feels stuck with it. Feels stuck in a lot of ways, with a lot of things.

“Are you older than Sans?” you try.

“i _am_ sans,” he growls irritably. “no way ta know somethin’ like that, sweetheart. doesn’t matter, anyhow.”

He probably knows, and he probably is, a little. And much like Sans, he tends to decide that things that make him feel helpless ‘don’t matter’. He’s not looking at you, so you think about the promise you made him.

(To find him. To remember. To take care of him, to love him, to let him love and take care of you.)

Well. He’s here. And you both remember. You’re taking care of him to the degree it’s possible, and...vice versa, you suppose. You've been trying to think of a way to say the stuff about your well-being possibly being dependent on each other in a slightly more literal way than he’s used to. Something that won’t come off as a threat...at least as things currently stand. So you think about the promise he made you.

(To share everything he is. To ease your pain. To take care of you, to love you, to let you love and take care of him.)

Welp. That’s awkward.

(Any place and time you both exist, this helps you find each other.)

You exhale slowly, words slowly coalescing into something that might help.

“The way we treat each other can affect us a lot. That’s true for everyone, but this is a little more literal.” He looks at you; you look at the ocean. Give him a second, then ask.

“Do you know what the promise is?”

He’s very quiet for quite a while. You give him as much privacy as you can.

“yeah,” he grates under his breath. No one had to tell him. He just feels it.

“I’m really, really careful...right up until I’m _not_,” you explain. “I act like I give a shit because I do, because my...choices can affect you. The way I treat you, and the way I...treat myself, maybe,” you admit. You almost killed Sans with lying and recklessness once. You don’t care to do it again, even when it’s an entirely new Sans. You take a deep breath before continuing.

“This isn’t like...we’re _not_ destined to have some kind of love relationship, okay? What I’m worried about is the kind of stuff we’ve already had to deal with. I care because I don’t want you to be subjected to things you didn’t have any say in.”

“kinda late for that.” His voice is hard.

“This sucks because it’s the kind of thing that isn’t anyone fault,” you plow on relentlessly. “We had no way to imagine you’d be able to come here. You had no way to know what we did was possible. Now you’re _here_, and I’m just trying--”

“you’re the one keeps comin’ after _me_,” he growls with a surprising amount of rancor. “don’ act like i’m the one stickin’ my ugly fuckin’ mug in your face all th’time.”

“I don’t think you’re ugly,” you blurt, surprised. Then you blush, because you might have put it different if you’d taken the time to think about it. It is, nonetheless, true. He darts his red eyes at you and sees that, and they flick away again like always, like his eyes will get burned if they linger too long on any one thing. Something about you keeps surprising him. You frown gently, searching his face for….oh. Huh.

He keeps expecting you to say something about his healed crush injury. To be fair to him, it is moderately spectacular; a quarter of his face is sunken in and lumpy. He certainly didn’t like how Sans and Papyrus figured it out so quickly, that his brother had something to do with it. Hurt him, maybe; although you privately think it might be very complicated, even if it’s true. It’s obvious their relationship is pretty unhealthy. You don’t know anything more than that, but it gives you a bad feeling. Considering….everything. You try not to think about it around him (or Sans) if you can help it.

“I already got to stare at your scar for ages when you first got here,” you say, and you couldn’t say what his response is. He just looks at you. You start to wonder if his skull’s fixed position has to do with keeping an eye on his brother or something, but you assume he can see him fine no matter what. It’s strange, but whatever.

“It seems like you keep waiting for me to notice it?” you try. “I did that part already. I’m not pretending it’s not there or anything.”

He doesn’t react. You reach up and pull off your shirt.

“I have scars too,” you say casually, indicating with your thumb. “There used to be a set of tig old biddies right here, and I had them lopped off. There’s like, nerve damage and stuff around there.”

His sidelong eyes dart up and down a bit. You let him ogle you and he does, since you made it clear you’d already done likewise.

“why?” he growls.

“Because their job’s done,” you say concisely, one of several reasons. Wary, grudging respect tinges his expression. And something disturbingly like envy you decide not to analyze.

“I’m trying to negate whatever advantage you feel like I have over you,” you try, “by being vulnerable now and then. But since I don’t know what it is, I’m just kind of doing random shit to try and maintain speaking terms with you. Maybe let you know what my deal is so you’ll be less freaked out. But like, the _nice_ way of saying that instead of what I just did.”

Red looks like he’s going to get up and leave. Oh, well. You’ve already emotionally accepted that he’s going to when he actually turns his _head_ to look at you this time. There’s a suspicious-speculative look on his face.

“you wanna see some porn?”

Oh.

You glance around; no one’s really nearby so you lean in.

“_Monster_ porn?” you ask quietly.

“yup.”

“Um, _yeah_??” It’s a strangled whisper. You look behind you, motion him to scoot back further with you under the umbrella so there’s less washout from the pale almost-sunlight. You shiver in the breeze, put your shirt back on in a distracted rush. “Wait, what kind? Films or like… real people? Pictures?” You don’t want to see anyone who doesn’t want to be seen.

He’s already got his phone out and is fiddling, but he makes a soft little _tch_ noise in his skull.

“’s’if i’d bother with that crap,” Red mumbles. “this’s from home, the _good_ shit. saved it in the book.” You’re not sure what book he’s talking about, but it can be assumed it transferred to his phone just fine.

“heh,” he says, equally smug and challenging as he presents you with his bounty.

It’s a remarkably skilled drawing of a good-looking rabbit monster, their features carefully etched with lines of unspeakable ecstasy. Nothing even close to distress, but there’s a little ugliness to their openmouthed expression, a few extra lines delivering impact that this is _private_. Not for everyone to see. They’re being held gently from behind by a larger and less distinct figure, and the bunny’s hands are scrabbling back at the other monster’s broad shoulders. Their face is buried in the bunny’s neck, but you can see although they don’t have any fur, and they do have horns. Their arm hovers in front with the distinct shape of a monster’s inverted heart-shaped soul just above their three chubby fingers. The way the drawing’s softly shaded, even though it isn’t colored, skillfully invokes the mood of the soft light cast by it. More muted than you expected, but there.

“Oh my god,” you choke out. “Wow.”

Red’s shoulders shake with gratified amusement, sockets narrowed at your heated face. “gets better,” he snickers quietly, reaching over to diddle his finger under the drawing and call up some text. The marks make no sense to you, but then Red frowns and fuddles with a widget to the side. It changes to English, and he raises his brows expectantly.

_Her very being trembles under the weight of his presence, a rock she can cling to until nothing can ever frighten her again. She can only gasp as she feels _ _his stability_ _, as she realizes he knows her _ _innermost self_ _. Her collar jingles faintly, her body _ _shak_ _ing_ _ along with her soul, and..._

“Corny, but I’m kind of into it,” you admit quietly. “is there a next part?”

He calls it up with an amused huff. You let out an incredulous snort when you see the other monster’s face finally. His flat nostrils are flared open, and the kind of wiggly lines that would usually indicate a smell go from the rabbit’s neck into them. Except they’re made of stars and glitter so you know it’s not a _bad_ smell. You’ve never seen anything like it.

_...her rich coney-spice fills his senses to bursting. With a grunt, he touches her so deeply that she feels her own scent blossoming in her cunny, making her hornier than ever. _

“Do rabbit monsters have a sex smell?” you whisper.

“uh…._yeah_??” Red’s laugh is incredulous, then it loosens to a snicker. “can’t smell it, huh?” You shake your head. “wow. being human must fuckin’ _suck._”

“Well, yeah, _ob_viously,” you mutter absently, mostly still reading the porn story. Smelling eventually turns to tasting, and the big monster pleasures the rabbit with his mouth on the next page. Her genitalia looks remarkably wet, and you can see the slicked fur clear and distinct from the still-fluffy dry fur. Neat.

“c’n just skim it,” he says with something between pride and glee. “they all got, uh. drawings. some of em are comics.”

“I wanna see the comics,” you say immediately. “Make sure no one comes over.”

“bossy,” Red scoffs, but his tone’s almost...fond? His phalanges expertly call up and flick through some sample images; a brightly colored one with high contrast backgrounds catches your eye.

“What about that one?” you ask quickly; you see him hesitate in the corner of your eye.

“that one’s, uh. fetish. they lose a fight, gotta give it up like i toldja. ‘s not for everyone.”

“I mean, you’re right. But...” You think better of asking anything, but he answers anyway with a teeth-sucking noise.

“not my bag either, but ‘m not ‘bout ta shitcan art that good,” he mutters, still searching. He’s lying, but you’re not sure about what part, and it’s none of your business anyhow. “...here,” he says, pulling up a very detailed black and white comic.

Two delicate, deerlike monsters are sharing souls. They both kind of resemble some people you've seen around Grillby's a few times. They’re fully nude, but you see no genitalia on either of them. No words either, just symbols that represent pleasured breaths or surprised utterances, tender gestures that say a lot about feelings that might be hard to describe.

As you page through it, you can see that they’re feeling each other’s soul-resonance. A page or two of them calling each other, and eventually pulling, looking, and touching. After a while, it shows how monsters merge. It all looks kind of different than stuff you’ve done; surprisingly provocative and evocative all at once. There are all these little sketchy lines everywhere that somehow _look_ like what it _feels_ like. The effect they create is remarkable, and now their fingers are inside the merged soul as they press their faces together passionately. You suppress a gasp as the sketchy-line effect shows something you hadn't anticipated.

What it must look like to _monsters_ when they push magic inside. Those threadlike, sketchy lines in strangely visceral patterns create differing textures inside the merged souls, like something dissolving out into something that's the same color, but still different. Because this is a simplified drawing, unlike Papyrus’s masterpieces, half of which you can’t see, it is able to represent something you never expected to be _able_ to see.

“Shit,” you mutter quietly.

“mm?” It’s high and smug.

“I have to get a monster phone now.”

“why’s that?” he asks after you don’t say anything because you’re having an emotion.

“So you can send me these.”

He laughs, but there’s more warmth in it than usual. “you like these guys, huh? how bout this.”

Well. _Now_ you know why the glow’s more muted in the black-and-white drawings. This splash-page drawing’s in color, and the monsters’ merged souls are tinged and swirled with crimson. As is the magic they’re shedding...along with their eyes, exposed tongues, and their newly emerged, pulsating genitalia.

_Red_.

Oh.

Your face gets hot.

“see something’ ya like?” Red purrs suggestively. “i got all kinks, sweetheart.” You clear your throat at _that_ reckless promise, and it turns into a husky laugh. He eyes you speculatively. “want me ta put it away?” Unexpected solicitousness, considering the source.

“No, no...it’s not that. I just realized why a joke is funny, I’m not embarrassed.”

“...guess not,” he says, narrowing his sockets as you continue your low, hoarse laugh of delight. “but here you are gobblin’ it up like ya never seen porn before.”

You look up at Red, grinning wickedly. “I don’t think they have this here,” you choke out, snorting. “For monsters, I mean.”

“y….you tellin’ me. they don’t have _porn_ here??” He seems sincerely horrified, and it quells your mirth.

You sigh heavily, frowning in thought. “No, they _do_, it’s just...” You look at a drawing of a monster without genitalia letting another who has it rub it between their thighs. Their soul is exposed, and they’re both touching it. “...different. Monsters will send pictures and like, talk about fantasies? With people they’re already doing stuff with.” On the next page, the same monster is putting the other monster’s genitalia in their mouth. “It’s private.”

“stories?” Red asks. “writing?”

“I think they do recordings to listen to, mostly,” you explain, “but I’m guessing they do those, too.” You press your lips together; it’s probably fine as long as you don’t name any names. “Some monsters like human porn, but they’re not supposed to admit it. People tease them if they talk about it, I guess. I think to them, doing things without souls is kinda pervy, but…”

“pervy how?”

“It’s, uh...kinky? To like touching that much? Like it’s extra, after a certain point. They only say they touch each other until their magic sheds. I don’t really get it.”

His eyes shrink as he narrows his sockets. “they don’t do this stuff?” He indicates the blowjob drawing.

“No, they do that constantly, with nearly anyone who’s willing. They just don’t really...talk about it, much less make porn of it. I tried talking to some of the monsters who were alive before the barrier, but I guess they have trouble remembering that stuff? It makes sense, in a way. They’re so old the memories start to get mushy at some point, so only really important stuff sticks around. I guess remembering how porn worked thousands of years ago wasn’t exactly high priority,” you chuckle. Grillby was too young before the war; Gerson just pretended he couldn’t hear you, and Toriel...is Toriel. You’ll find the bravery some day. You and Red share a look of naughty commiseration, because you both certainly would have remembered.

“But mostly I think it turned out that way because monsters _really_ like sharing souls. So they just do it instead of fantasizing about it. I’m guessing not so much where you’re from?” He looks surprisingly thoughtful.

“not a lotta sharing going on,” Red says eventually. “people don’t trust each other, they don’t come out.” Explains their surprise at the sheer amount of children here, among other things.

“Monsters here would go nuts for this shit,” you say instead of commenting on that. It surprises him again. Then you feel an odd sense of something like urgency, very faint, in the part of you that’s always aware of Sans. You glance up briefly, but don’t see him anywhere around. Well, it doesn’t seem life threatening, so you dismiss it.

“why bother with drawings n shit ‘f they c’n jus trip, fall, and land in someone’s fuckin’ honeypot?”

“Because it’s good,” you say honestly, and then, frowning, “and they like touching their own souls just as much. These are all like... sex ideas you could think about, then make yourself feel just like that with touching. I can tell it’s by someone who has some ideas about how they might like to feel.” Garnet iridescence creeps across bone; you look back down at the phone.

“Especially ones like this,” you say, indicating the first one you saw with the rabbit monster. “They’ve got a whole vibe. It’s...generous? Someone went to a lot of trouble to make it really detailed, like they thought about it for even longer than it took to make. She feels safe, and reading about it makes you feel that way. It feels almost like sharing… something?”

You pretend not to notice Red pushing his shoulders down subtly, just like Sans when he’s suppressing a shudder. He’s not used to those sort of...compliments. And that’s when you realize he _made_ some of what he’s shown you. Red can draw and write, and he’s the author of the rabbit monster illustrated story.

He looks at you, and instantly knows you know. His scarred face creases with chagrin.

“Sorry,” you say with a shrug. You touch your sternum, and his skull seethes wine-red. “I’ve got cheat codes.” You sigh. “But anyways, I can tell you what the monsters here will like and what they won’t. You could make plenty of _money_ with this, is what I’m saying. Monsters will pay a lot for that sort of thing, because it’s something only you can do.”

“anyone w’ hands, and some what _don’t_ can draw a fuckin’ _picture_,” he protests in increasing bafflement. “i’m not-”

“Isn’t that what you used to do with these before?”

“wh…?” He’s nonplussed. “yeah? but...used to do a lotta shit back then no one pays for here.”

“You’re an artist,” you say, quiet and adamant. “No one can counterfeit this. It’s too unique, and I think I could tell yours from anyone else’s.”

“bullfuckin’ shit,” he scoffs.

You quirk an eyebrow and start rolling through them. “here,” you say pointing. “here, here…..this one….” you judiciously skip the fetish comic, “...you made this part but not the ending, and this...”

He snatches the phone away flustered as hell, and you pout at him. “Sorry you hate me for being right,” you say, but his expression’s haunted. You coax the phone back toward you, and he allows it. “I can tell by the facial expressions,” you explain mercifully. “Like it feels so good it’s scary, and they don’t ever want to stop at the same time. A little ugly, like no one can see them.”

You smile, noticing something else. “And that little, um. line with a heart, so you know they like it even if it’s kinda crazy. Some of this stuff would bother me if I saw it in something different, but that tells me everyone’s cool with it. So even if it’s not my thing I’m just like, ‘shine on, you crazy diamond’!” You grunt thoughtfully as he pulls it away again. “It’s a really good way to tell one fetish from another without having to guess or read something, come to think of it.”

His face is purple as an onion now.

“I can’t say it in a not-embarrassing way,” you protest, then gesture open-handedly at the phone he’s clutching like pearls. “Just...you wouldn’t have to ask your brother for pocket change anymore, but more than that... I think people really deserve to _see_ this. It’s _good_.”

“so??” Red looks like his unheld horses are halfway to panictown. “what’s it _to_ ya?” he pleads desperately, like he needs something today to make sense to him. You feel instead of thinking, and something heart-and-soul just _clicks_.

“I want _in_,” you pull out of your ass.

“in _what_?” He barks in exasperation. “in my pelvis? in the fuckin’ _ocean_, cause ‘m about ta-”

“I want to make monster porn-” you point at the phone and steer _that_ sentence back in the right direction, “-_these_ porn thingies with you. I can draw too. Or I can write them and do ideas. We can collaborate.”

Red’s expression needs to be in a museum.

“baker’s dozen, huh?” he hisses almost admiringly.

You toss your hands up, smirk and tilt your head at him. “So I’ve been told, but full disclosure. It’s been so long since I’ve seen an _actual_ nutsack I don’t think I could pick one out of a lineup even if _you_ drew all 7 in a row.”

Because the last only has one ball in it, you don’t say and watch him figure it out. Ahhh. Yeah, you got him. Mitten over the sockets, yukking it up. He calms, then lowers his hand to skewer you with a look.

“so. what do you think _you_ c’n do?”

“I can draw and write, but you’re better. I can tell you what they’ll _like_.”

“yeah? you gonna tell me all bout nasty human shit? cause lemme tell ya, sweetheart, those videos n magazines-”

“You think I don’t know monster sex things?” You ask a lot of people a lot of questions, and what they _don’t_ say is often even more interesting than what they _do_. He sees enough in your expression to know that you think he’ll be impressed.

“what?”

“I don’t know...” you equivocate playfully. “You almost fainted over a few _drawings_...”

“fuck you, thass different,” he growls peevishly. He’s right, considering his embarrassment was over being complimented and not what for, but you’re not playing fair. He’s still red all across his zygomatic arches, and he huffs like a pissy cat. “what’s some human know bout what monsters like, anyhow?”

You stare at him flatly.

“skeletons don’ count. there’s literally _four_ of us.”

You just grin and beckon with a saucy finger.

He’s outraged. He’s appalled. He doesn’t trust you as far as he can throw you, but he’s stronger than he looks. He leans in close, turns his head and takes his eyes off you so you can whisper what’s got you so smug. Good to know that Sans being a sucker for a hack comedy setup is a trans-universal constant.

“I heard that Dogs can summon their souls _into_ their junk and knock each other up by _fucking_,” you whisper an inch from his acoustic meatus, “because their cocks push magic out when they come…and if they swell up so it stays in, it’ll _keep_ coming out long enough that it’s a _guaranteed litter_.” You huff a delicious little snicker. No clue if any of that’s _true,_ but it’s your current working theory for why a few of Sans’s genitalia shapes can push magic out in a different way; like it’s automatic versus manual (ha). The Dog shapes he makes haven’t ever, but none of that matters because it’s just for porn. “We should make that the title,” you finish, low voice shaky with amusement. "I'd love to see how you draw what that looks from the inside."

You pull back to see how that went over.

Red’s shrunken eye lights are fixed on the water, like he just went through all five stages of grief and finally arrived at the sixth: horny.

“fer fucks sakes,” he breathes shakily, then pulls a white cloth out of his pocket and wipes his now-remarkably-sweaty skull with it. He darts a few glances at you. “you, uh-”

“I can’t smell it,” you remind him quickly. “Unless you decide to do it right in my mouth or something, you’re good.”

“yer fuckin’ _filthy_, sweetheart,” he whispers admiringly.

You shrug and flap an ‘aww shucks’ gesture at him. Something over his shoulder catches your eye; a bright flash of movement you lean in to peer at. It’s Papyrus.

You narrow your eyes against the salty wind, gazing at Papyrus curiously. His eyes meet yours, and there’s a flash of anger. He can’t take the time to remove his glove, because Edge’s attention is supposed to be on him right now, and he can’t talk and keep it at the same time.

“_Don’t_! (INTEGRITY→That Which Observes; Becomes!)!! Not yet,” he shouts anyways, because you’re causing a problem by skipping ahead again. You checked ahead and this happened, made it so this is what you decide. And you took Papyrus along for the ride, intentional or no.

You feel a hard twinge in your soul, and you gasp with Sans’s recoiling horror.

Oops.

Red stops talking abruptly, turns his head around so he can see where you’re looking. Then he turns back to you with a dangerous expression, and looks….

….Somewhere Else.

Then he’s standing so suddenly you have to flinch back from a scuff of sand. His eyes are fiery despite being backlit by darkening overcast, practically glowing in his silhouette with the killing rage his chest heaves with. His mittened hand is cocked at his side in a way you only see Sans’s doing when someone’s about to hit a wall with jarring force. You stare up at him in shock.

“you slitface _cunt_!” he hisses like a viper. “you thought you cou--”

He cuts himself off, his face crumpling in both absolute despair and consternation. Because whatever he just reacted to….you have no fucking clue what it is, or what he’s talking about.

And he can’t help but _know absolutely_ that you don’t.

Red immediately unravels, leaving you shocked, insulted, and with a churning sense of existential dread that seeing his shortcuts always shoves into your stomach like a bowling ball. Weird thing is, instead of getting better over the next few seconds...

...the feeling gets significantly _worse_.

It’s also not in your stomach anymore.

Edge tears ass in stilettos over sand until he’s in screeching distance.

“WHERE DID MY BROTHER GO?? WHAT DID HE SAY??”

Papyrus is right behind him, face dangerously blank.

“I don’t know,” you blurt, too bowled over with whatever this horrible feeling is for anything but the bald truth. “He just called me a cunt, changed his mind, then took a shortcut to wherever Sans is.” You don’t know how you know that, but you do.

Papyrus’s suddenly bare fingers tap Edge’s skull reluctantly, and now they’re blank mirrors of each other.

Terrified.

“I’LL MESSAGE YOU WHEN IT’S DONE,” Papyrus says as gently as his panicked voice can manage. “I DIDN’T KNOW IT WOULD BE HAPPENING NOW, BUT WE, WE CAN’T _WAIT_. I’M SORRY.”

And he and Edge trot leggily and at blinding speed to Papyrus’s car, get in, and disappear.

Alphys and Undyne hold each other over by the pile of soundly defeated garbage.

They approach you as the light dims. A timely, mood-changing drizzle starts because this is just a story, the whole world flattening and losing its color until it’s just something narrow and separate. You watch the towels become chaotic loops of thread, and the blanket ceases to make sense.

It’s fine, since none of this has anything to do with you.

This isn’t really you at all. Just a picture that isn’t even a picture, just words on a page, on a screen, images of letters made out of numbers that don’t exist, mathematical instructions turned into electricity telling pixels to be on or off, resized and edited to suit.

Zooming and skewing the world into deafening details that wash away usefulness, blot out readability.

Improperly hinted fonts blown wide to spew nonsense like concussed pupils.

Alphys and Undyne lean down to you cautiously, but you’re not looking at them because none of this is real. You know it’s not, because why would everything happen with such distinct grace? Like strokes of a brush, a pen, a word, a letter, an atom? The ground stays where it is and so does the sky, absolutely ridiculous. You know it’s all just tiny specks of chaos hurtling through space, so you can ignore it. Storms don’t just appear to set the mood because _you_ feel bad, so you don’t _actually_ have to feel anything at all. It makes perfect sense.

“Is….Sans okay?” Alphys whispers so quietly, you almost can’t hear her over the surf, the wind, the hiss of rain.

You're smiling blankly into blinding grains of sand. There are flat white ones, clear crystals, flat discs and darkly opaque ones. One is sort of shaped like a “Y”, so you try and read that for a while, eyes jittering and circling, seeing if more words will coalesce from the mystery of a single letter.

You don’t want to look at it, so you look _around_ it and read the space where it isn’t. Lots of space in here. Each grain is its own little world, its own character in a story no one will ever know. It was a piece of something once, and then it was broken and smoothed and tumbled and broken again until it washed up here on the beach, just like this you-that-isn’t.

The sand slowly changes from dry to wet, releasing a hot scent like the departing soul of the earth.

“No,” you say calmly as they take temporary custody of you. It’s okay. All your friends and family know what to do when the Reader stops reading for a little while.

“He’s hurting himself.”


	16. Care For Him Badly...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Flames – Free Fall  
https://youtu.be/nRaFURFWCoM

Sans turns the pages of the machine, flicking quickly through the multiverse.

His left eye becomes a flashing ring around the absence at the center, a reflection of the inherent imbalance in having only one physical component. Papyrus promised him at least five minutes, during which he would keep Red _utterly_ preoccupied, and Edge _moderately_ preoccupied. It’s better if Sans doesn’t know exactly how; better when the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing.

The way Sans feels about “_Red_” hasn’t changed one iota since he got here. Dangerous and unpredictable. He’s _hiding_ something, he’s _up to_ something. And Sans is not about to wait around to see what it is, especially not now that Red and Edge have started going out and killing people.

(Bringing them to Justice like Sans does when it’s bad enough, but Sans isn’t in the mood to split hairs right now.)

He knows he’s tipping his hand by rushing this. It’s only been four months since they showed up, but Sans hasn’t taken his tertiary vision off the machine since they got here. Well, just a few times to quickly check and make sure he’s not about to take a shortcut into a wall, or solid rock or something. And that one time to find his fucking _shoes_, but _whatever_.

If Red’s even a fraction as smart as Sans fears he is, he won’t have taken his eyes off this place either.

Except Sans knows Papyrus can make the impossible possible. Sans has five minutes, 3.8 of which are left. He trusts his brother absolutely, and if he says five minutes, that’s how long Sans has. Sans fumbles a page, almost tears it in his haste. Sans isn’t very good at things like hurrying, but that’s the way the multiverse crumbles sometimes.

Sans grunts, frowning briefly at a spatter of unassigned numerals. The machine is sort of like reading a book made of numbers, arranged in ways that represent things...most of those things being Sans and Papyrus with slightly different lives. The numbers quickly translate themselves through the sieve of Sans’s eyes into mental depictions of bodies, minds, and souls, allowing Sans enough insight to dislike what he sees.

Sans uses his left hand between two matrices to weave in the coordinates along the basal _x _matrix and a _y_ matrix, pinches and pulls out a skein of time to run the scenario at +50xy→(justified). His eyes jitter as he takes it in, then close while the cyan→ (0) ←yellow sets it to memory all in one chunk. There are sixteen more, but he ignores them for now. Won’t need ‘em. He hasn’t done this in a long time, but his hands don’t forget.

Not that he doesn’t dislike how his own timeline has turned out, but this is a constant reminder of how things could have gone worse, or better. And then there are the ripped out pages, unhappened lives that Frisk….

Ugh.

There’s a reason he doesn’t do this often. Ever, if he can help it. There’s a ticker alongside that lets him know if there’s a disruption, along with some basic coordinates that although spare, are kind of a triumph considering they can tell him if there’s been any recent changes.

Despite that… the ticker’s contingent on knowing where he is right _now_, and that’s always the hard part. Welp. Either way, the most recent one still shows only the arrival of Red and Edge. He’ll take the wins where he can get em. Just stories and ideas, but when they align they get more real. Stories told the most often are the ones that survive. Sometimes Sans thinks of it like that, thinks about _you_ like that. The story could always go differently, but he’s grateful for the time you spend here. “Here” being relative; you can always close your eyes and take him with you when you go. He hopes you think about him, even when he’s…

Sans sighs, shakes unfocused thoughts out of his skull.

Facts are facts: right now he’s trying to find where Red and Edge _came_ from. Them leaving shouldn’t have torn out the timeline or anything like that, although technically he can’t rule it out. He can wring a lot even from a broken machine, but what Sans knows about it is a mere fraction of what this abominable thing actually does. Fucks with time, fucks with space, and the way they interact isn’t anything anyone can predict.

This shit is _way_ more haphazard than most people could ever be comfortable with, and Sans sure as fuck isn’t.

Facts are facts: Red _remember__s_. He must know where they came from _before_ they were underground, he must know what made it possible that they’re like this. Infinite, both unchanged and constantly in flux. Seeing as Red obviously knows how to fix the machine, he must know what it’s actually supposed to do.

As far as he’s been able to ascertain, Red hasn’t been back here. As far as he can _see_...nothing’s been disturbed. And considering he can see on the equivalent of a molecular level...that’s not saying nothing, but…

He might as well assume that Red can do everything and anything Sans can do, since he _is_ him.

Sans isn’t very good at hurrying, but he has a way of ending up where he needs to be nevertheless.

The five minutes expires just as he finds it, and it is unfortunately not very far from here. Not far at all. The numbers turn into a picture, a story, a narrative made of values and functions, similarities and differences he can spin out of symbols at a glance. And from the look of it, it’s more or less exactly what they said it was, and….oh, shit.   
_Fu__uuu__ck. _

No wonder they jumped ship; nothing left to save. Pretty much everyone’s dead. There’s no hope, no human souls...nothing but a mad king over a handful of murderers sitting on a dustpile. But as it turns out, that’s...not the problem.

The problem is that he finds something much worse right near it. Beyond microscopic; Sans’s eyes jitter as his tertiary vision divides by zero, circling something he can’t ignore, even though it’s not possible.

Jitter, circle, jitter, circle. Impossible, but it’s there. He knows what this is.

(Ohh… messy, messy….)

Sans falls blind to his hands and knees. There’s a jarring rattle of bones as he retches hard.

Again and again, like he’ll die from it.

The tiniest drop, spilled by someone in a big hurry. The only thing worse than what it _is… _is what it _means_.

The machine isn’t broken.

The

machine

_was _

_never _

_broken_.

“shou--,” Red grates behind him, suddenly present. But Sans is already up and facing him before he gets the second _syllable_ out, much less the second word.

Phalanges hooked and spread, he _pulls_.

Sans yanks Red into Judgement so fast they both stagger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd never written fiction before what I've done here. I've had fiction writer friends though, and it turns out a lot of the things I used to roll my eyes at are true. Stories just happen, then demand that you write them.  
People asked me while I was posting A Certain Tenderness what an "Underfell" version of these bros would be like. I didn't know what Underfell was, so I tried to find out. And then I made the mistake of running that scenario in my head, knowing what I know. The overwhelming feeling I was left with can only be described as  
_I can't leave them like that._
> 
> The next chapter is going to be optional, and will have a detailed summary as an alternative to reading it in full. The next few chapters will come out more quickly than usual.


	17. ...And You’ll Badly Care

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is an exposition trainwreck of nauseatingly bad choices, and is profoundly upsetting.
> 
> **Sexual violence, rape, self blame, and severe injury/death will take place in flashback form, and everyone will be wrong about everything.**
> 
> I'm a bad judge of other peoples' expectations, so there’s a summary of the chapter’s events in the end notes. You can read that instead, or read it first if knowing what will happen helps.  
A lot more will be explained in the next chapter if you'd rather wait for that. <3  

> 
> Pixies – Broken Face (‘87 Purple Tape):  
https://youtu.be/3JI7iUYyDVA

Sans wheels around the second he realizes what makes the machine run and pulls Red into Judgement so fast there’s no way to escape it.

This _sick_ motherfucker, if he did anything to those kids that Fell, if he did anything to_ Frisk_-

…

…Oh.

Okay, then.

This might actually be worse.

A single soul hovers between them, turning slowly although it’s always facing both of them. The same _soul_, the same _person_. And not just their monster soul. Sans sees the iridescent haze of two traits they share: the. same. person.

Just because Sans can’t remember it, doesn’t mean he can’t see how that thread is the _exact same one_ up until the place where it splits. Before that? Same thread. Same person. _Same exact life_ up until….a point. Something Sans can’t remember, but Red does.

Sans can see the differences now. Chara’s Determination and the Level of Violence that separates them, and the….

The _divergence_ created the first time the machine was used.

It’s not broken.

It was never broken.

And  most  unfortunately, it  _can’t_ be  broken , no matter how hard Sans tries/has tried/will try.

It just runs on a fuel Sans didn’t know existed for the vast majority of his life. The stuff Sans makes instead of having a child. What his body makes when he merges souls with you and pushes magic inside.

But there _were_ no humans in Red’s underground, or at least none that made it out of the ruins. Sans feels his eyes fizzle out; he wishes they’d stay gone so he didn’t have to see the nasty piece of business in front of him. But this is _him_, it’s _Sans_, he did this to Papyrus, he…

“how could you do that to him?” he rasps shakily; Sans doesn’t know his own hands are tearing at his face as he staggers back on his heels, but he manages to pry them away for just a moment. Nothing can stop his phalanges from weaving all Sans’s voices together into the deadly weapon they are.

“**how could **_**you d o t h a t **_**?**” he screams, and he hears the choked scream from Red (Sans) as (j u s t i c e) tears through him. But Red doesn’t disintegrate; he doesn’t even _die_.

Why won’t he _die_?

Sans’s eyes congeal just enough to see that Red’s on his knees, sickly-bitter red tears streaming down his face. Determination and torn magic pour out of his nasal aperture, huffed wetly through the cracks in his grin to spatter like gore. A check: that took him down to 1. Ate away his LV-borne buffer, carved off the difference in the space between what he should have done and what he did instead. Red’s not a good person. Just the seeds and core facing Sans on even turf now but…. but he’s still fucking _here_.

If this was what Sans thought it was, he wouldn’t be.

“Fuck you,” he signs once he notices Sans can see him again, swaying faintly where he inexplicably still kneels. “You’re a Coward. If you saw that much, then Look at the rest. _Look._”

Sans doesn’t want to.

_ **L o o k.** _

But it turns out although Red can’t break the Judgement, he _can_ force Sans do his job.

He can make Sans _know what he did, _because they’re _both Sans._

Sans sees Sans sitting in Grillby's, watches Sans finally give up. He _knows_ what’ll happen if he starts shit, but at a crucial moment, he just can’t care anymore. There’s no point in keeping at it. If he even thought of Papyrus right now it’d only be relief that he hates Sans like he _should_, that his fear and hate should be enough now to survive. Now he can walk right through solid rock, walk right through everything Sans put between his little brother and the nightmare everyone else is living.

But he doesn’t think of his brother. He only thinks about _nothing_, and that’s what he’s about to become.

Sans watches himself hop off the barstool and shove Dogamy right in front of Dogaressa.

He sees him trip Sans in retaliation, he

sees himself fall,

sees Dogaressa’s kick that caves in the bottom half of his face and scatters it across Grillby’s floor

sees his eyes go out for good like he just wished for

sees himself

Fall.

And here’s Papyrus still in stripes, exploding through the door too late to stop it, but not too late to dust Dogamy and Dogaressa together with a single construct. All of this before anyone in the bar has even had a chance to process Sans getting up, and three people are ended forever, just like that.

He watches Papyrus’s bare, shaking hands scrabbling the pieces of his his brother’s face off the floor right before they turn to dust too, working as quickly as he can and flooding them with his own magic to keep them intact, keep all the bits that are _Sans_ right where they go. He’d had his gloves shucked before he even got to kneeling down beside his Fallen brother, and Papyrus’s hands can’t be argued with, his voice can’t be denied. Not right now, even in stripes. Not with two monsters dust on the floor at his hands, the EXP sizzling right into him like acid, and his brother about to join the dirt pile.

When Grillby kneels alongside to add his fire magic, fusing the bottom half of Sans’s face back where it goes before Papyrus drains his own HP to nothing trying, he seems shocked by his own actions but he probably shouldn’t have been. The teeth are shattered and sharp, edges joined wherever they fit and his mouth fused shut absolutely now. The left side of his mandible that used to be the good one is now deeply ridged in the shape of Papyrus’s hasty fingers. It’s sunken in, making him look oddly crumpled.

He couldn’t find it all. Some of it is really just…gone. It must have fallen into Sans’s mouth, swallowed and absorbed…and that also might be why he didn’t just dust immediately. His body decided to stick around just long enough to finish his last meal.

Dogaressa fed Sans his own shiteating grin, just like she always said she’d do some day. Made him eat shit and die. Because Sans will, it’s just a matter of time. Eating part of his own face only delayed the inevitable, made this linger. The monsters still in the bar are frozen in shock and horror; a few begin to weep unsteadily. Grillby lurches up, stumbles away into the back with a horrible whicker-wail of grief.

Sans broke the ceasefire of Grillby’s, and the punishment had been death.

No one ever sees Grillby again.

Papyrus might have spent his life in seclusion, but he knows enough to grabs a few thing out of the empty piles of clothes and shoves them into his pockets. Then he uses his dusty hands to lift his brother to his chest and walks right out the front door, face impassive like nothing happened.

Like _n__othing_ happened…and if it did, it couldn’t have been all that bad.

When he gets him home and lays him down on the busted-in, jangly couch, Sans watches Papyrus’s blank face shatter as much as his own had, just in a different way. Sees him kneel to grab his jacket and _scream_, smearing him with the dust of two Dogs.

Papyrus cracks inside the striped sweater, inside the carefully curated innocence that made his brother happy. Sans watches his little brother hit LV 2, shaking and making a terrible, painful sound as it burns itself right into his soul. Hears him screaming for his only family, his only friend. The only person able to get in or out of the stone coffin he’d been raised in, until Papyrus finally figured out how to walk through walls.

He’s begging not to be left _alone_. Not _again_. The next time his hands clutch…

his dead brother feels it.

Papyrus doesn’t know, doesn’t understand what’s happening. Sans doesn’t either; Sans is dead. All he knows is that his brother is calling him, so he has no choice. Never did.

He answers.

Sans’s delicate, iridescent soul takes a long time to gather itself, takes even longer to follow Papyrus as he sits up, shocked and terrified. It was already moving towards Somewhere Else. But Papyrus interrupted its journey, called him back with everything he had… and it still wouldn’t have worked if Sans hadn’t answered.

(<strike>If Sans had had any choice but to answer.</strike>)

Papyrus needs him.

He doesn’t want to be left alone.

Sans <strike>can’t</strike> doesn’t say no to his brother.

Papyrus sees the only thing he wants to see. Sans loves him just as much as he loves Sans; it’s the _only __thing_ that matters anymore. Papyrus’s hands are what he uses to learn, movement is what he needs to figure out how to fix this, put the pieces back _where they go_. In the absence of other cues, the absence of knowledge or guidance, his body and mind choose _action_. He needs to fix something unfixable: to heal the homeless soul of his brother that hovers above his empty body.

Papyrus reaches out and takes Sans into his hands.

He freezes; falls utterly still, utterly silent.

It feels…  good.

Are bad things…allowed to feel good?

Are they supposed to?

Of course not. Of _course_ it’s good. It feels good so he’ll know he’s doing the right thing. Something bad wouldn’t feel like this, would it? It must be okay, then, and he gets even more sure when he finally… he… he knows...

Papyrus hears a strange little moan; he doesn't recognize his own voice.

He knows _Sans_.

Sans wants him to know it’s going to be okay. He’s confused, he doesn’t really know what’s going on or why Papyrus is...here? Why he can...can _feel_ him… But Papyrus is okay, and that’s what’s important. He’s going to be _just __fine_, even after Sans is-

“NO,” Papyrus croaks from a face returned to impassiveness despite the magic streaming from his sockets. They’re empty, not that anyone but Sans would be able to tell the difference. He’s breaking apart, and empty fear howls through the cracks.

He knows Sans’s regret, how much he wishes he’d been less reckless, wishes none of this ever happened. Wishes his soul-weariness hadn’t overridden his duty to his brother for the brief moment it had taken to lose his temper, and his life along with it. But it did, and Sans is gone now. There’s nothing he can do. Papyrus is going to be okay, he’s so good, he’s _good_ and he’s going to be-

“NO,” Papyrus repeats dully, starting to pant. “YOU’RE NOT G-” He can’t finish that. “YOU’RE _RIGHT HERE_, YOU’RE JUST…HURT.”

Something important in those sockets dies in turn when Sans lets him know it’s worse than that. Papyrus takes a deep breath, and breaks again. Merciless fingers curl into everything he’s ever known or loved.

Sans is _right here._

He’s not. _Going._ Anywhere.

“NO,” he says, a third and final time. “I’M GOING TO MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER.”

He can’t be misunderstood. He can’t be argued with.

And neither can the flood of his magic that rushes into Sans’s soul, pouring love-hope-compassion into it until it hums and resonates not only with Papyrus’s incredible vitality, but his recently gained LV. He tells himself he’s trying to _heal_ it; he doesn’t know why it feels so… this feels different, but… he doesn’t know what else to do.

He’s never been this afraid, and he has to do _something_.

So he does it more.

Sans has nothing to choke or cry out with as his brother burns his way in slow and inevitable, feels how it hurts, feels how it’s… good; he’d said Papyrus was good, and he meant it. He can’t really stop Papyrus from knowing that either, he doesn’t really...know what’s going on, but… It’s so vital and hale, it throbs dull and deep, and it feels… strangely (terrifyingly)… _familiar_, while being utterly alien at the same time. It’s strong-sharp and heavy; it’s _not him._

Papyrus grunts and shivers as his teeth part in awe, his eye lights coming back into existence to witness his brother’s surprise and confusion (<strike>pain and pleasure</strike>). He watches those faint emotions strengthen with sensation as his soul absorbs the magic he...he’s pushing in. This is pushed magic, saturated with intent like when he heals Sans (<strike>but it’s </strike><strike>_not_</strike><strike> like that, it’s, this </strike><strike>_**isn’t **_</strike><strike>_**healing**_</strike><strike>_IT’S NOT _</strike><strike>_IT’S NOT_</strike><strike>-</strike>). He wants to, he wants… Sans to _stay_.

(<strike>\--waiting </strike><strike>a month </strike><strike>for Sans to come back, biting and </strike><strike>writhing and</strike><strike> trying not to scream--</strike>)

He _has_ to _stay_.

(<strike>_Stop _</strike><strike>_**leaving**_</strike><strike>_ me!_</strike>)

Papyrus pants shallowly as his body is absorbed by his brother’s soul, tries not to listen too closely to his own soft, vocal breaths.

This feels even better than touching it.

Papyrus wasn’t expecting it to feel this way... but he decides to let the fact that it does strengthen his resolve again. It feels good because it’s _helping_. This is _fixing_ him. He keeps going until there isn’t any more, and Papyrus starts to feel a little...unsteady. He ignores his own strange noise as he stops pushing his magic, feels how virile-full the fragile heart feels around his fingers.

He’s terrified to let Sans go as he looks down into more-than-empty sockets, studies the shattered grin. There’s a hole there where he couldn’t find enough of the pieces, and...oh. There’s a _space_; Papyrus feels a sharp spike of fear his brother inadvertently shares, as well as the soothing balm of relief that follows it.

It’s a _good_ thing the space is there because it means Sans can still eat. If Papyrus had had to knock any of his teeth _out_ to… well. There’d just be two piles of dust on the couch instead of whatever the fuck this is.

Papyrus leans down and tears off a piece of the couch cushion with the bare fingers of his free hand. Sans is wondering what the hell he thinks he’s doing; vaguely aware of...oh. Papyrus is seeding it with his magic and pushing it through the hole in his face, the one with his mouth on the other side of it.

A phalanx tilts his crushed chin up; the piece of cushion dissolves out, and Sans feels his connection to _being here_ strengthen. The next bite goes to Papyrus; even with the seed cost it’s a net gain. Papyrus is an incredible cook, it turns out. Better even than Muffet. After Papyrus and Sans’s corpse have shared about half a cushion, Papyrus is putting him...he’s. Wait…no, he’s not _supposed_ to-

Papyrus knows where everything goes.

He shouldn’t be able to put him back in here, but he does it anyways. Sans’s disconnected soul floods into his empty body, seething with his brother’s magic... just like his body from the healing, from the feeding. Like and like form a glue, keeps him weighed down and held together, keeps him right where he is. Where his brother _decided_ he goes, and his hands can’t be misunderstood.

He inherited that little quirk, didn’t he (it’s not a question).

Sans has eyes again, and they melt to fill his skull like useless pudding. Impossibly long phalanges rasp down to close his sockets, keep his mind inside.

Don’t...don’t(don’t) think about (don’t do this) it (don’t think about it).

Get some (jus’ babybones, he’ll-)rest(he’ll t e l l y o u), get some rest.

(<strike> w h e n h e ’ s r e a d y </strike>)

Papyrus had stayed in stripes for much longer than perhaps he should have.

It had made Sans happy, made it so much easier to avoid hard questions and harder answers. It made most other monsters avoid him even after Sans couldn’t keep him sealed up anymore; Papyrus doesn’t have _friends_, but he has his brother. That’s all he needs, and the stripes made Sans feel less guilty for never telling him all the things Sans doesn’t want him to know.

Papyrus doesn’t ask any of the questions his brother doesn’t want him to.

He stayed in the house.

He _behaved_, no matter how long Sans was gone.

Sans promised he would always come back, and Papyrus felt it in his soul the split second that promise broke. He doesn’t know why. Papyrus had guarded Sans’s secrets from himself as viciously as he now guards Sans’s body, the vigil growing long. Too long. He has to leave and come back a few times, and it’s...he doesn’t think about it. Just comes back, does whatever he _needs to do_ in order to return to the half-eaten couch, sometimes panting and wounded, to his unconscious brother’s side.

Sans never told him about showing souls, touching them. Never told him about what pushing magic in there feels like, or what it can do.

Never told him who you should and _shouldn’t_ do that with.

Never told him how to ask, or that he’s supposed to.

He’ll (not) tell (for a) you (long) when (long) he’s (time) ready.

It’s a

l o n g

t i m e

before Sans is able to focus his eyes again. Once he does, the first thing he sees is Papyrus’s face.

All of his teeth have been broken or filed into sharp points that fit together perfectly when he closes them. He looks like Sans now.

Most of the furniture is gone.

“pap…” he tries, patting himself without coordination. “wh…”

His fingers find the wide brace of leather around his neck, the buckle of silver bones.

It’s Dogamy’s marriage collar.

“wh…”

“LEAVE IT, BROTHER.” Papyrus seems impassive, but no one can read him better than Sans. He’s relieved. He’s overjoyed, he’s…

He _loves_ him.

“THEY WILL SEE IT, AND THEY’LL REMEMBER. _NO ONE_ WILL TOUCH YOU AGAIN, AND IF THEY DO…”

Sans watches iridescent rust seethe across his brother’s skull. His striped sweater is gone, his shirt is the same color as his undergarments now. Mottled, so it blends in with the dustiest corners of Snowdin. It’s too short, it’s…oh.

He’s wearing one of _Sans’s_ shirts.

(<strike>It’s dirty</strike>)

His scarf hangs in shreds. Sans should make him another one soon. This one’s almost bitten through.

“...WELL. IN ANY CASE, THAT WAS _QUITE_ A NAP! HOW ARE YOU FEELING, YOU LAZY SACK OF TRASH?”

“what’d you do, papy?” Sans whispers hoarsely.

“I _FIXED_ YOU!” Papyrus answers with a grin that won’t ever manage to look innocent again. Not with those teeth. “THEN I FED YOU UNTIL YOU GOT BETTER, SO WE’LL NEED NEW FURNITURE AT SOME POINT. YOU CAN FINALLY SHOW ME WHERE THIS "THE DUMP" IS!! I ALSO PUT MY MAGIC INSIDE YOUR SOUL TO KEEP IT HERE, AND I MAY NEED TO DO SO AGAIN.”

Sans thinks he’s imagining the high whine in his skull until his brother speaks again.

“I UNDERSTAND YOUR CONCERN. IT WASN’T UNTIL LATER I REALIZED WHAT I HAD _ACTUALLY_ DONE!” Papyrus goes completely silent and still, but the disturbing, supercilious expression on his face doesn’t go anywhere. It’s like he’s just...frozen.

(<strike>Crackling hisses, dissonant tones.</strike>)

Then, just as suddenly as a machine that got switched back on, he continues. “NOT KNOWING IS PROBABLY A _GOOD_ THING! SINCE IF I HAD, I WOULD N-NEVER HAVE DONE THAT TO YOU.”

(<strike>Papyrus doesn’t </strike><strike>_remember_</strike><strike> him. </strike><strike>He </strike><strike>_doesn’t_</strike><strike>.</strike><strike> There’s </strike><strike>_no way he can_</strike><strike>\--</strike>)

His newly serrated grin widens vacantly as sickly-reddish tears spatter down.

“BECAUSE! IT TURNS OUT!? THERE ARE THINGS ONE JUST DOESN’T DO TO YOUR _BROTHER_.”

A sharp, hysterical sob of laughter.

“_CERTAINLY_ NOT WHEN HE’S _DEAD!!_” Papyrus screams, smiling harder.

There’s something behind those sockets just as broken as Sans’s face. He doesn’t ask where he found that little tidbit of information out. Papyrus is LV 3 now, and Sans curls up into a ball.

“I DON’T REGRET IT,” he lies mercilessly. “NOT IF IT KEEPS YOU WITH ME.”

Sans tries to make himself Go Away, but it doesn’t work. His brother needs him, and he...they _need_ each other. Papyrus shouldn’t have been able to do what he did. Not just… putting him back. Making Sans answer at all, even when he was dead. What he did after that.

Sans _feels _him. He’s still in there, and it’s… sore. Sans wishes he felt empty, but he doesn’t. Maybe if he wasn’t such a total failure, if he wasn’t so _bad-wrong-disgusting_, he could have just died… could have told him _no_ like he should have been able to, and gone on to wherever he was headed. Oblivion, if he was lucky. Papyrus still doesn’t know he shouldn’t have been able to do that, and Sans is going to make sure he never finds out why he could.

Why Sans is broken in the sickest, most disgusting way possible.

His sobs are silent at first but wrack him so hard the buckle jingles. When his voice emerges to shatter him the rest of the way, he weeps high and hopeless like the hurt child he never stopped being, like the grotesque innocent Papyrus became to make his brother happy.

Sans fumbles a shortcut, hits the floor hard. Papyrus is too surprised to catch him as he staggers up in a panic, runs out the door but he can’t escape it. Can’t escape his own body. He has to make sure Papyrus never finds out why Sans _can’t_ say no, why Sans couldn’t have stopped Papyrus from doing what he did. Papyrus can’t know. He _can’t_.

Why Sans already wants him to do it again.

Why he _wants_ _it_.

Wh

h

“h… hey, papy…” he slurs after some time neither of them remember very well (<strike>he remembers everything exactly like it happened</strike>).

“…pap.”

Panic has a funny way of generating some unexpected results. Papyrus had figured out one of two things that will make Sans’s soul come out for him eventually, once Sans had started to Go Away again. Sans is doing his best to keep him from figuring out they’re actually the _same_ thing, but this is just another way he’s failed his brother. Might as well add it to the pile.

Sans can’t hide his excruciating arousal or how much he hates himself for it…but at least he’s dry; at least Papyrus doesn’t have to _taste_ how disgusting Sans is. Sans can barely speak around the heavyness clogging his soul, from under the weight of his brother’s broken love keeping him lodged in his body like dirt in a wound.

He’s been trying to die every few minutes since he woke up, but it’s no use. Sans can’t stop his brother from doing this, but so far he hasn’t helped him either. He still won’t tell him what what he’s doing is called, or why it makes either of them feel the way it does. Papyrus is almost done crying, maybe.

Sans suppresses a noise when his brother sheds again; Papyrus doesn’t know why he isn’t _stopping_ now that Sans is taken care of (<strike>_their bones are touching, he k_</strike><strike>_NO_</strike><strike>_ws he’s just not listening_</strike>) and Sans… Sans _can’t_ stop, but Papyrus doesn’t need to know that. He’s already scared enough, because it feels like something’s going to happen. Scared because he _wants_… something.

Sans wants to help him feel better, so he does the only thing he knows how to.

“…papy...”

“...WHAT?” It’s an echoing caw, an empty sound edged with dust. The viscous scent of spent magic drenches the house they failed to learn how to be children in, pain and pleasure soaking into the carpet and walls.

“how d’you know it’s t-time…” Sans shudders with arousal and aversion, suppresses his voices as they try to swarm up against this. “…time ta go to the dentist?”

“HOW?”

“when it’s…” Sans tries to hold his breath as Papyrus sheds again. It doesn’t work. “when it’s tooth… hurty.”

It works too well. Papyrus’s surprised, sincere laugh sobs out through tears; the harrowing innocence in it cuts like a knife. Sans grunts in quiet defeat. He can’t hold it anymore.

“s-SANS…?” Sans hears the terrified urgency in his brother’s voice. He’s scared because Sans is in pain, and he’s even more horrified that his body_ likes it_. Sans needs to make sure Papyrus never finds out why (<strike>his p</strike><strike>urpose</strike>); that’s not his fault, either. It’s not, it’s _not_, it’s NOT--

“s’okay, paps.” It’s a grief-crushed whisper as he strokes his brother’s clothed back soothingly. He hides his leaking sockets behind the back of his wrist, tries to make his voice steady, but it’s (_drowning, dying__)_. “s’jus’ how it is for me.” (b/r/e/a/k/i/n/g) “y-you’re… s’_not_ your _fault_, k?”

It’s not Papyrus’s fault that this hurts, and it’s not Sans’s fault that his body has never belonged to him. What _is_ Sans’s fault is that his own cowardice made his worst fears come true. Too late he remembers what isolation and ignorance can do, too late he sees where he went wrong. He thought he was keeping him _safe_. Sans let himself become his brother’s entire world, and Papyrus would do anything to keep that world from ending. Sans turned his brother into _this_ when all Papyrus was trying to do was heal him, to _save _him from his own suicidal mistakes.

Now all Sans’s choices are gone again except for one, and he makes it.

Papyrus doesn’t know how or what to ask, doesn’t know he’s _supposed_ to, and Sans can’t say no anyways. He turned his brother into an unwitting rapist, and there’s only one way to make him _not_ one. Sans decides to give his brother the only thing he has left: permission to do what he’s already doing.

“jus’...go ahead,” he rasps. “s’gonna be good, not like mine.” He holds his breath until the need to scream passes. “i want you to, okay?” Sans manages to get out the last bit before his voice chokes away from him completely.

“…i _want_ it.”

The truth hurts.

He scrabbles at cloth, pointlessly hides his devastated weeping in Papyrus’s ragged red scarf. It doesn’t hurt Papyrus at all; it feels just as good as Sans promised it would. He loves Sans so much he can taste it. Papyrus stays and holds him, _tells_ him he loves him, too.

He _stays_.

Sans, utterly faithless, tries to Go Away again. But he’s too full of Papyrus, body and soul. Too full of determination and his brother’s LV. He tries to die as hard as he can, but instead he just falls asleep and takes Papyrus with him.

“_you_ know why i couldn’t stop him from making me come out,” Red says conversationally, still trying to stand. “he put most of it together eventually, ‘cept for that part.”

No.

“he knows he has to hurt me. knows he has to _fuck_ me. made sure he never...”

He coughs out another gory spatter, tries to lurch to his feet and fails with a muffled clatter. “never found out why.”

Sans’s teeth grate; his fused mandible feels like an icepick’s lodged in there.

“how we had another brother before. what ended up _happening_ to him.”

No, no, no.

“he had to stop the sicko shit when we got to the underground cause asgore had ‘im watched all the time, the paranoid old fuck. _you_ know who i mean.” Red sounds downright folksy about it. “i acted like i didn’t remember what he did ta me, but once i got _old_ enough...well.”

Red doesn’t have even as much flexibility in his grin as Sans does, but he sure manages anyhow, doesn’t he. He looks like a blooded shark as he hooks a finger in his red-stained left socket, gives it a vicious little tug. It seems like the pain gives him the strength to finally scramble upright, although he sways and staggers before continuing.

“i gave ‘im what he had coming. asgore didn’t give a flying fuck what happened to him as long as the _core_ kept _coring_, and he had some pissant who knew how ta keep it that way. made myself seem useful, then ran back n forth from new home to the frozen-shut asshole of the ruins to get away from it. never stopped running, not that it did any good.”

He tugs his socket again with a shuddering grunt, and Sans can tell it’s not for his benefit anymore. “<strike>get away from _him_,</strike>” he whispers flatly; his eyes lights dim to nothing for a long moment. "<strike>poppin up all grey n drippy, an saying he was gonna--</strike>"

Sans isn’t breathing. Red chokes off a retch as he shoves all his fingers into his socket at once. He yanks them back out to let the bloody pinprick of his eye well back into existence, so it can watch his own battered fingers flexing, slowly crushing nothing.

“and wouldja lookit that. seems like i finally_ did_,” he finishes.

Disgust and hate burn across Sans’s soul like acid, caustic enough to take a few percentage points off his HP.

“don’t act like you coulda protected paps from him any better than i could,” Sans grates quietly, trying not to show it. Because Sans hadn’t; that much is obvious. No matter what you said, whatever happened to Papyrus was bad enough he chose damaging his mind over remembering it. Just like Sans had. “the only reason he didn’t get to papyrus is cause asgore went nuts.”

Red’s face goes slack-smooth with unfathomable bitterness. He lifts his busted chin and takes a step back, makes a short, sharp sound almost as grating as his brother’s voice.

“oh, didn’t i? did such a great job keeping sweet lil papy tucked away safe n sound, i ended up with this.” He pulls at the black-and-silver marriage collar around his neck with an index phalanx, making the buckle flash and jangle. He’s more gentle with the worn leather than his own socket.

“now my baby bro takes _real_ good care of me,” he growls precisely through his shattered rictus. His sockets go perfectly round, voice dripping with venom. “gives me everything i need, just the way _**i **__**want**__** it**_**.**”

The last three words are a crackling, dissonant set of tones; Sans retches hard. He doesn’t even fall over when he loses another shaving off his HP, though. Small victories in a situation where no one wins.

“how can he _not know_?” Sans croaks when he can breathe again. “how can he not see it?”

“cause he doesn’t _want_ to know,” Red answers with cruel sweetness, and Sans knows it’s true. “and i don’t want him to either, so don’t you dare say _shit_ to him.”

“why shouldn’t i?” Sans rasps, desperate to draw blood. “why shouldn’t i-”

“i’ll tell you his name,” Red growls as he limps belligerently back into his space, and Sans almost faints with the certainty that it’s not an idle threat. They both know exactly who he means. “just because i suck at protecting my bro doesn’t mean i won’t _try_.”

Sans shakes his head silently, but it’s capitulation, not negation.

“and just because we’re fucked up six ways ta sunday…doesn’t mean we don’t still love each other. we… we like it now,” Red pants desperately, as if the words are being torn out of him. His voice is a dry, awful sound. “we _like_ it, god fuckin’ help us.” His shaking hands curl into claws as he covers his face, and Sans can hear broken teeth in the sickened groan he forces through them. “me n him fucked _everything_ up, and we’re _payin’ for it_.” He lets a violent shudder wrack him, expression utterly hopeless when he finally manages to pull his hands back down. Red’s voice fades to a resigned whisper.

“we’re gonna be paying for it _forever_.”

Sans feels like the magic holding his bones together froze solid a while ago, and his own voice when it emerges is a ghost of itself.

“does he know it’s not _supposed_ to hurt like that?”

If Red hasn’t told Edge at least that much, Sans might just kill him after all. Even if he has to do it the hard way.

“told him it’s part of my _condition_,” Red rasps. “he knows i like it anyhow.”

“you like it _because_ it hurts, you nasty fuck,” Sans hisses incredulously.

Red shrugs carelessly, their HP ticking down to 0.3 in unison.

“eh. tomato, tomahto.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DETAILED SUMMARY:
> 
> Sans realizes that the machine runs on the Stuff Sans makes when magic’s pushed in his merged soul instead of having a child. It's Red's. He pulls Red into Judgement, and he is immediately able to perceive that Red made the Stuff with Edge, and that they had an already-existing incestuous relationship. Sans assumes Red forced Edge into it, possibly as a child. He tries to kill Red with justice, but it doesn’t work.  
Red forces the Judgement to make Sans see how that started, which is also how Red's face was injured.
> 
> Red started a fight in Grillby’s. His face was kicked in, which killed him instantly. Edge, still in stripes at that point, arrived in time to kill both his attackers (Dogamy and Dogaressa). He gathered the pieces of Red’s skull and did his best to put them ‘where they go’. Grillby fused them with fire magic, leaving Edge’s handprint where he held it together.  
Despite his body’s repair, Red had already died. This left him in a “fallen down” state, and Edge took Red’s body home.
> 
> Red had kept Edge entirely ignorant of sexual matters and wearing stripes longer than was seemly. In the extremes of grief Edge inadvertently called Red’s soul. Because of Gaster’s conditioning, Edge was able to make Red’s soul answer. In a panic, Edge touched Red’s soul with his hands.   
Despite suspecting that what he was doing was wrong, he then pushed his magic into it, telling himself that doing so would heal Red’s soul. Because he’s Papyrus, Edge was able to use his hands to force Red’s soul back into his body, and his magic kept it there.
> 
> Red woke up to find a higher-LV Edge in adult clothing, his teeth filed to points to look like Red’s, and himself in Dogamy’s marriage collar to ‘remind’ others of what happened. He could feel what Edge had done to his soul without his permission or consent. He still didn’t explain anything to Edge, even though Edge made it clear he’d somehow learned what he had done was sexual in nature, and that doing that to your brother is wrong.
> 
> After an ambiguous time skip, Red begins dying again because he was actively trying to. It’s implied that Edge discovers through a combination of panic and instinct that he can make Red's soul come out by raping him physically, so he does it. Physical acts are not described, but how they feel about it and what they say is probably awful enough. When Edge doesn’t stop after putting Red’s soul back, Red decides to blame himself, and “consents” in order to, in his mind, clear Edge of blame.
> 
> Red tells Sans that despite the way it started, both he and Edge “like it now”. He makes it clear Edge still doesn’t know about Gaster or what he did, and that Red intends to keep it that way. He threatens Sans with telling him Gaster’s name if Sans says anything to Edge about Gaster’s existence or the abuse.
> 
> So, Sans is pretty fucked up about all that, and seems willing to hop on the “blame Red” bandwagon. Probably because Red is also Sans, and self-blame is kind of their default setting. 
> 
> NOTE:
> 
> Sorry for any inconsistencies. I didn't cross-check this chapter as much as I usually do because it's unpleasant.


	18. drinking buddies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **[unhealthy relationships, trauma response, dissociation; discussion of sexual violence, past abuse/CSA, and general Fell unpleasantness]**
> 
> Sans and Red have a talk.
> 
> Okkervil River – The Latest Toughs  
https://youtu.be/SGEBsNC7miY

“they called it ‘silver’.”

It’s a dissonant set of tones, rusty with disuse.

Sans arches an orbital dubiously, but Red just shakes his head. “not...metal. ‘s a word that means the color it is… but if someone said ‘silver’ they don’t mean anything but _that_.”

They’re at Grillby’s now. Sans had let Red clean his face up with a hand around his wrist so Red couldn’t shake him, then brought him here for Grillby to heal. Sans had grudgingly allowed Grillby to attend to the damage he’d inflicted on himself, too. Just like Grillbz always does, that sad-calm look on his face, not shocked, not even bothered. Just here, like always, for whatever Sans needs. Sans lets that shame burn its way inside him, make itself at home. Just in case he needs the fuel.

They’re both Sans, and if there’s one thing Sans is sure of, it’s that he’s a liar. As far as Sans is concerned, what…the judgement had to show him…doesn’t change that. And none of it explained why the fuck Red and Edge came _here_.

They say it’s impossible to torture a masochist, but Sans knows better. He can talk what he needs out of anyone, even himself. And Red’s already continuing. How cooperative of him.

“thing is, that stuff has the potential to become pretty much anything. ‘s body and soul at the same time, cause a how its made.

bodies’re like…the soul we borrow to stay here,” Red tries. Sans feels a little sick. He can _hear_ exactly how he and Red are the same person, same exact life up until a certain point. Red keeps talking.

“the soul’s us, but _magic-” _the short burst of static’s fundamentally unlike anything human, _“-_that’s what keeps it all connected. Makes us able to exist here like this, instead of just staying where we are when we go back in.”

Makes them able to be alive. Which is of course why what Edge had done had worked. Also because he’s Papyrus; he knows where it goes. And to some degree also decides where it goes...if he can decide hard enough.

Sans can’t find his voices. This is already getting out of his control, and the only person he has to blame for it is himself. So he does. He waits for Red to continue, biding his time. Drawing him in.

“you got a lotta _layers_ going on in this universe, sansy. you got the higgs keeping humans and all that physical shit in the right patterns, makes atoms able to stick together and _be_ stuff, like people an’ planets and chlorine gas. then you got magic like this whole nother grid to lay shit on top of. magic and higgs both run along time, but souls?” He shakes his skull slowly. “you startin’ to see what i’m getting at? silver’s _all of em_. s’everything at once. s’why it can take you wherever n _when_ever ya need to go.”

Sans manages to get a handle on something.

“…_why_?” It’s a croak of despair.

Red looks at him, features arranged in something closer to pity than Sans is okay with. But he can’t do anything about it. Sans can never do anything about anything.

“why _anything_, sweetheart?” A tight little huff. “ain’t no _why_ in any a this, not for you and me. jus’ is what it _is_. and that’s what i’m _telling_ ya.”

No point to any of it. Never was.

“what _are_ we?” His own voice scrapes against the inside of his skull, tasting like shit and entropy. Red’s eyes look as defeated as Sans feels.

“we’re a skeleton. nothin’ special. jus’ some motherless freak half-cloned off a the biggest piece a shit ever existed, s’far’s i can tell.”

“wh-…” Sans waits for his voice to come back. “wherever the fuck we came from. weren’t there _others_?”

Red scrubs his sleeve across his face angrily, but it’s not at Sans. He huffs again, sharper this time. “_yeah_, but...can’t be sure, cause he...we weren’t allowed ta....” He grunts in frustration. “s’not like we were allowed to know anything he didn’t _want_ us to know. he was always-” Red chokes off, eyes Sans miserably. “most of what i remember’s pointless, fucked up shit that’s jus’ gonna mess you up in the head,” Red growls. “you think he let me know anything that was actually _important_?”

Sans just stares at him while DT devours his patience.

Red breaks so easy, flushed like sweet purple poison bubbling out of a pie crust.

“went nosing around a few times. he didn’t have to do what he did ta get silver, ‘cause he _already had_ a bunch, an’ we didn’t make it.” Red’s nasal aperture flares, and so do his eyes. “he jus’ wanted _more_.” Sans must not be controlling his expression as well as he thought, because the flare dampens, and Red sobers. “you know what he could do with his voice, sansy,” he says quietly. “you _gotta_ know.”

Sans doesn’t say anything. He especially doesn’t think about how affected he’d been by Edge’s voice.

“no one knew what he did,” Red rasps, words dragged out unwilling, points in haggard sockets staring at the wall. “everybody loved him.”

There’s something he’s not saying (<strike>something he just said</strike>).

Something he’s not saying (<strike>he just </strike><strike>_told you_</strike>)…

Sans feels a chill of warning so deep he shoves the thought away like it burned him. He defaults back to waiting him out.

“fuckin’..._what_?” Red barks.

“you knew enough to keep the core _coring_,” Sans says flatly, then he stops fucking around. Pity’s still quivering in those eyes, crimson and intolerable. “you got the answer when i couldn’t. you’re _smarter than me_, cause your bro didn’t erase half your fuckin _mind_.” Sans controls his breathing, exhales slow. “not that i’m complaining bout that,” he whispers, lets it show in his face. “god, you’re a sad piece a work.”

Red’s face hardens. “takes one to know one, huh?”

Sans shudders resentfully at a truth harsh enough to peel another shaving off his HP. “’m spread kinda thin…guess it makes sense that some of me’d be a lil _different_ after that kinda mistake.”

Red’s confusion is unexpectedly genuine. “mistake?”

“existing everywhere and everywhen,” Sans clarifies. “we fucked up the math.”

“that…wasn’t a mistake,” Red says slowly. “that’s how it’s designed ta work. s’why only we can use it.” Red’s eyes sharpen at Sans’s silence. “you didn’t know that either,” he half-whispers. “only works fer us n papy, and...him.”

“there _was_ an error.” Sans isn’t buying what he’s selling, and hearing that fond little nickname come out of that filthy, smashed face kind of makes him want to kill something. Probably himself; nice to have more options there now. “he didn’t get to where he meant to go. it wasn’t time yet.”

Red exhales quietly. Takes a long pull from his glass.

“he couldn’t control it s’much’s he thought,” he rasps finally. “he wanted to do something with time, and couldn’t. but it still _worked_, because he made it go...some_where_. he wanted inside the barrier; if the barrier only existed in the past….that’s where it took us.” Another long drink, and the glass hits the table empty. “problem was, we didn’t give him the final numbers. we _already_ worked out the differential inside versus outside the barrier.” His “we” doesn’t mean all three of them anymore. Red’s face goes sour and distant.

“me _an_’ you, cause that was _before_ the machine,” he admits. Considering he presented that as his _in_, his way of convincing Sans he was owed a _place_ here…. “it was jus’ some numbers he gave us. we didn’t know what it was for, but we knew enough by then not to give him exactly what he asked for.”

Sans’s eyes flicker hard as he tastes something unfathomably bitter, he’s not sure where it came from. Seems dark in here. He lists sideways in the booth seat, tries to straighten up. He can’t right away; it’s clinging to him like tar, like _nothing_, like he can’t shake it.

Then he does.

When he looks back at Red, there’s that pity again, tinged now with horror and…something else. Something Sans likes even less.

(<strike>It’s guilt.</strike>)

“…you poor fucker.” The points in Red’s sockets dim. (<strike>Guilt and </strike><strike>_shame_</strike><strike>. He was lying, and something in Sans reacted to it. </strike><strike>Tried to scream the truth out of the abyss at his core.</strike>) “dunno which one of us has it worse,” he rasps.

(<strike>_**It’s pity.**_</strike>)

Sans sees white with rage for a split second; then he feels absolutely nothing.

(<strike>_you don’t _</strike><strike>_**get to**_</strike><strike>_ pity me_</strike>.)

When he can see things again, Grillby’s back with two fresh glasses for each of them. Flame flicks gently over Sans’s skull; he shudders at the warmth like he just came in from Snowdin. He doesn’t say anything to Grillby, looks across at Red.

He takes his glass and drinks. His anger and pain return slowly, at a rate he can manage.

Well. Good to know they both worked out the differential, since it was apparently necessary to get where they went. Good to know he doesn’t owe Red jack shit.

(<strike>Even </strike><strike>so</strike><strike>, </strike><strike>Sans</strike><strike> still doesn’t </strike><strike>_remember_</strike><strike> doing it. And after the forgetting, it’s obvious he </strike><strike>_c_</strike><strike>_a_</strike><strike>_n’t_</strike><strike> now anyways.</strike>)

Sans takes a shaky breath, but Red’s forefinger lifts from the where it’s flat on the tabletop. After Grillby leaves again, he continues.

“okay. maybe we _didn’t_ know better. but…jus’ had a bad feeling about it. gave him a solve for something a lot sooner than he wanted instead, then told ‘im it was a mistake when it went sideways. couldn’t do after, cause there wasn’t much “after” left once...” he sighs. “my best guess now is it was frisk gettin’ there. one day isn’t long enough.”

Sans’s soul goes cold. “long enough for what?”

Red stares at nothing.

“ta be old enough, maybe? needed...time to...dunno. i….” Red makes a very disturbing little click noise. “don’t remember.”

The fucked up part of that is although Sans knows very well he and Red remember everything exactly how it happened...they also don’t. The same way Sans knew and didn’t know the machine wasn’t broken.

The same way Sans “forgot” a lot of Papyrus’s childhood.

Sans doesn’t know if Red’s lying or not because Red doesn’t, and not knowing fills him with that seething rage once more.

“here’s a question.” Sans feels his grin quirk flat at the edges, then pulls them back where they go. “you coulda gone for me the second you got here. bet i never woulda seen it coming.” He doesn’t want to say this, and Red already knows. The point is, he’ll like hearing it even less than Sans likes saying it. “coulda sent pa- edge after me _anytime_, i couldn’t have lifted a finger.”

He waits for a beat, just long enough to let him realize he still could.

“why’s that?” he adds before Red can figure out what to do with that information. Keep him off balance.

“you already know,” Red grits out, low and resentful.

Sans doesn’t react to that, even though as far as he can tell, Red really believes it.

“i really don’t,” he says, since it’s true. Red looks at Sans like Sans just shit the booth.

“cause i’m not here to _kill_ you, dumbass,” he says slow and incredulous. “how can you still _think that?”_ There’s a small noise of disbelief. “what, you think this is some kinda body snatchers shit? like i’m gonna get you outta the way and take your _place_ or something?” He makes a short bark of humorless laughter, gestures incredulously to his red eyes, his smashed jaw. “hate to point it out, but uh. not really passing this mug off as factory sealed.”

Sans just smiles eyelessly, lets Red work out how impossibly _dangerous_ all those years of not-killing Frisk has made Sans. Lets Red figure out that Sans hasn’t entirely decided not to kill _Red_. Sure, Red could take off. Grab his brother and disappear somewhere, except he knows Sans will always find them.

From the expression on his face Red kind of expected that, but it still hurts a little.

Good.

(<strike>A tiny objection rears up inside him; Red’</strike><strike>s reaching out</strike><strike>. </strike><strike>Maybe Sans doesn’t have to--</strike> He crushes it.)

“then. why. are. you. here?” Sans asks again in his mellowest rumble, eyes returning to watch the microexpressions dance across Red’s face as he squirms.

“that lil human piece a yours know how much of an asshole you really are?” he rasps desperately.

Sans’s smile goes hard at the edges, but otherwise doesn’t budge. “i sure hope so.”

“fuck you,” Red whispers. Sans can practically hear the DT eating Red’s patience, gnawing him from the inside out until the line between right and wrong, between a good idea and bad one, goes dangerously soft. It doesn’t look comfortable, and Sans lets a little of his certainty show just to rub it in.

There’s a reason this is Sans’s special attack.

There isn’t anything that Sans **doing nothing** can’t crush.

Himself most of all.

Red just sits there across the booth like ten pounds of shit in a five HP bag, the physical manifestation of the worst things Sans ever suspected about himself. Sans goes ahead and lets _that_ show, too. No one knows how bad he really is but him, and wow, there he is. A brotherfucking, cowardly murderer who failed at absolutely everything, even dying. All the awfulness he always wondered if he was secretly capable of come to crushed, pathetic half-life. But there is one important difference.

Sans can go on like this forever. Red can’t.

Red just does what he does best.

He breaks.

“fluffybuns decided a judge with papy’s EXP was more _useful_ than two of us,” he chokes out like it’ll kill him. Sans can’t stop himself from flinching. “all that oopmh in one package ‘stead a losing my shit from more kills. there’s _nowhere to go_ once he gets an idea like that, n paps _knew __it_.”

Yeah. This wasn’t what he expected to hear.

Red rattles quietly; a hitching breath escapes before he continues. “he was gonna go down for me easy, but i told him no. told him i’d dust without him; but asgore’d keep him if i wasn’t around anymore. he called my bluff. said he solved the code for my notes long time ago.”

The truth, and one he never should have-

“so i told ‘im what we had to do ta get outta there. he said he’d rather let me _see him_ than go on without me.”

Sans makes a weak noise of protest; red eyes flare up like coals and pin Sans to the seat. Sans asked a question, and neither of them can handle the answer. But he’s getting one anyways. Sans finally realizes he’s made a grave error, and that it’s already far too late.

“papy _never _wanted_ anyone_ to see ‘im, _but i did_.”

Sans tries to cover his face; Red’s hand darts out too fast to dodge and grips his wrist just shy of breaking bone. Sans feels invisible jaws slam shut, caught in the trap he built for himself. Because he _is_ himself; Red knows it, and his fingers tighten inexorably.

A hair more pressure will dust Sans right here. Grillby freezes at the bar; Sans hears a whine from his own skull he can’t choke down.

“did _more_ than that, bucko.” Red’s eyes shrink to bloody pinpricks, impossibly small to be this opaque. Then the left one _swells_, sickly-red and bloating with what this is doing to them.

“i felt how much he likes to hurt me. how it feels for _him_ when he does it, jus’ like it was mine. it’s_ real_ good, sansy.”

“s-s-s-” Sans stutters; his free hand tightens until the blunt tips of his fingers curl wood from the tabletop, but one tug on that wrist’ll be the end of him. He changed his mind. He changed his mind. He changed his _fucking mind don’t don’t __DON’T__\---_

Red’s sockets go perfectly round, his body still.

“but that’s jus’ gravy,” he whispers pleasantly. His face is smooth, expression almost as gentle as the pressure he’s putting on Sans’s bones is deadly. The trap’s sprung, and neither can escape anymore. Nothing can stop this.

“i made papyrus do exactly what _**he**_ used to do to me,” he says, words carved directly into Sans’s soul: a wound. Red is utterly motionless, his ceaseless whisper slicing them to ribbons. “and i wanted every last bit of it. turns out it feels _jus’ like __him_. and i. couldn’t stop him. from _**knowing i**__**t**__**did**_.”

When Red squeezes Sans’s wrist one last time, it doesn’t break; merely hurts just enough to _keep_ him from dusting right in the booth. The part of Sans that knows exactly why Red tugs at his socket that way is sorry it works. He can’t live with this, and he can’t not know it’s true.

So Sans just does what he does best.

He breaks.

Poison pours in to seal the breach, excruciating and familiar.

Red throws Sans’s own hand back at him like something nasty he regrets touching, rattles his bones and chokes off that fucking retching sound trying to claw its way out of him again. Sans wonders if he makes that sound too, but if so, he can’t hear it.

“happy now, you _piece a __fuckin’ garbage_?” Red hiss-wails. He yanks up his hood, pulls the fake fur in on both sides to wipe at (and hide) his face. No wonder it looks so used up and matted. Sans feels an anticlimactic thorn of regret pierce his already-mangled soul as he listens to Red’s hoarse, toothy sobs.

_THEY’RE REFUGEES, OF COURSE._

Sans always _hears_ Papyrus, but he doesn’t always _listen_. Always to Sans’s detriment. It’s like what it says when he checks Papyrus, the same both ways. From one direction: _Care for him well and you won’t need to_; a pun that only works in its original <strike>font</strike> text.

Read from the other direction:

_Care for him badly, and you’ll badly care._

This is the end of it, the bottom of it, the truth of it. There’s no “plan”. Red’s not trying to do anything, he’s just a fucking mess. And all he was hiding….well. Sans wouldn’t want anyone to know something like that, either. Not even...himself. And that’s the rest of it, isn’t it. Red’s out there killing humans for the exact same reason Sans used to fuck them. He hates himself.

Red and Edge are just crushed iterations of Sans and Papyrus that realized too late what they had to do to escape was worse than what they were running from.

Oh, well.

Sans, utterly merciless unto and especially at extremes, puts his arm in the air and holds out four trembling fingers in a specific position. Grillby comes. He does it reluctantly, his greyish tinge letting Sans know the price isn’t only being paid by Sans, but he comes. He brings what Sans requested.

Sans puts it on his tab.

Sans braces an elbow on the table, holds one hand steady with the other and holds the first glass against his teeth long enough to tip his head back. Most of it ends up in his mouth. It gives him just enough to push Red’s towards him, enough to demand he

**d r i n k. i t.**

before taking his own second glass and draining it. They combine inside him, and something thick and insulating surrounds the previous ten minutes. It expands, lodges outward against the edges of his infinite self. The feeling reminds him of a recording he watched on your viewer once, how bullets lodged in wounds could keep humans from bleeding to death.

eventually

Red continues.

“bringin’ me n the boss here was risky,” he says, then coughs roughly. He wipes at his shattered teeth with a sleeve and goes on, unconcerned. “still is, but this’s the furthest we could get on one go. i didn’t lie bout that part, but…” Red visibly decides not to say something. “took a chance on chara and the lv being enough that we wouldn’t jus’-” he snaps his fingers, “-soon’s we got here. that could still _happen_,” he says seriously, meeting Sans’s eyes for a minute. “that’s what i been _trying_ to tell ya. someone too much the _same_ comes, we’re _all_ fucked.”

It’s not great news. “so. not so much collapsing in on this one. maybe...invading it.”

Red shrugs. “close enough. not like i was gonna tell you how the machine works.”

Sans nods. That’s fair. “how does the machine work?”

Red tells him. Which spot’s for who. Finding the coordinates. Where to put…it.

“silver makes it so you can keep everything together cause it’s all three. ‘s what made papy an’-” his eyes flick almost imperceptibly downward, “-t’ other one able to do it too,” Red adds. “shortcut’s something we made up after, cause we don’t need th’ machine for a lil hop once we were already everywhere. how long it take you ta figure it out?” Sans just narrows his sockets, but Red nods like he got a reply. “he didn’t know we could do it, jus like he didn’t know bout papy’s bones.”

Things like this are all pretty obvious when all the safeguards Sans has in place to keep himself from knowing shit like this aren’t working because of what he drank. Doesn’t mean he won’t feel the cuts later. Sans drags his mind back to the machine, like that’s gonna hurt less somehow.

“so. anyone who comes jus’ left everyone else to it, huh?”

What Red used it for isn’t what it’s actually for, making its unnerving unpredictability even more random. Its purpose was already fulfilled long ago, some day far in the future. Red’s just smart enough to figure out a way to make it bring Red and Edge _here_ instead, and he tells Sans that, too.

“guess it’s possible we’re still there,” he explains indifferently. “got no real way to know fer sure.”

Sans sighs. “well. i’m here, an’ m two inches to the left a here, too. so. maybe.”

“i still feel like me, though,” Red says in the same flat tone. “_we_ got outta there. still alive, still together. got a real house and everything,” he adds, something shaky-bitter pushing through the dampening haze.

“why is it...what _is_ this?” Sans hears himself asking blankly. “all of this? why am i you?”

Red huffs. “think of it like…first time the machine got used, we all got thrown back to a point where we existed in every timeline, but _more_.”

Sans tries thinking of it like that. “when we first got underground.”

Red nods vaguely; Sans scrapes together some words.

“everything that could possibly happen…

….is _gonna_ happen. until there’s no more possibilities, and we get to the point where the machine first got used.”

“maybe we can make sure he doesn’t get there.”

There’s a lot of empty space in here. Or maybe that’s just inside him.

“i don’ think bout stuff like that, an’ you shouldn’t either.”

“you said it’s different depending on how it’s made. how’d you get far enough?”

“gotta use more, or...stronger.”

“how was there enough?”

Red’s inebriation results in a mild shrug.

“cause it was both of us. s’why we did it like that, i didn’t know how else to make it work. don’t use enough, might end up too close. too close ta who ya already are, and yer fucked. and that’s the end… up _both_ ends,” he finishes. “heh.”

“anyone who comes...” Sans drones, “...guess we know they h-had...had to’ve done somethin’ fucked up.”

Red shakes his skull. “not if the barrier’s gone. not if...i dunno. ‘f someone else fell.”

What Sans drank doesn’t let him think about that too hard.

“i don’t get why you were able to go _this_ far, no matter much you....” He doesn’t finish that sentence.

“you don’t wanna know the answer to that,” Red says hollowly, but Sans knows anyways. Can sense it, and saw it for himself. Because it’s not actually that far, and Red and Sans _aren’t that different._ Just a few little changes and there he sits. Sans feels part of himself go Somewhere Else, but the rest stays to deal with this. He should really be used to it by now, but….heh. He’s tapping into skills he hasn’t had to use since Frisk stopped trying to kill him every few months.

Frisk.

Without Flowey, without Asriel’s dust...just a dead kid at the bottom of a hole, another body in Chara’s grave. He wonders briefly if Red’s figured that out yet, if he’s gotten the drift of _why_ Sans is always going to be a fraction of a step ahead of him even if Red’s smarter.

Why Red’s not going to be getting the jump on Sans anytime soon, asleep or awake.

(<strike>Sans’s hand catches the knife on the downswing</strike>)

“integrity,” he says shortly. Red flinches, but he nods.

(<strike>Toriel snores peacefully beside him.</strike>)

Something about using Integrity to make the silver gives it a boosting temporo-spatial quality.

“patience? bravery? _justice_?”

“dunno,” Red answers. “we’re the same under the dt and lv, but i dunno if any a _that_ changes it, either.” Red’s face still has that artificial-calm thing going on, but there’s something bitter in his voice when he adds, “seems like you’d have a better idea on that than me. you got a kid out of it, after all.”

Sans takes a deep breath he doesn’t need.

(<strike>Frisk and Chara pushing the knife at his face together, demanding a reckoning </strike><strike>Sans refused to give.</strike>)

“he really didn’t make us like this on purpose?”

Red’s left eye light is still swollen. Looks fucked up, but it doesn’t seem to be bothering him any more than the rest of this.

“jus’ my opinion, but i don’t think so. ‘f he had a way to make it happen on purpose, he’d a done that makin’ paps.” He exhales slowly, face blank. “nah. more likely he’d try and breed us.”

“…_what_?” Sans’s voice is so far away from him.

“find a way for the silver to work on us. see if he could hit the jackpot a second time.”

Oh. He means breeding Sans and Papyrus together like humans do to animals to get the least likely possible result, then inbreeding to fine tune the features. Shorter face, longer tail, bigger ears. Get something stunted and deformed, totally infertile with a fucked up face and too smart to be anything but a liability. Sans is a little glad the rest of him isn’t here to feel this.

(<strike>Frisk’s i</strike><strike>rises glitter</strike><strike>ing</strike><strike> like coals through the choppy fringe of hair. </strike><strike>Chara, screaming voicelessly:</strike><strike>INJUSTICE</strike><strike>.</strike>)

Sans lets his thoughts tick out like he’s reading them off tape, but keeps them behind his teeth. Papyrus isn’t like Sans, but he’s still infertile. Sariel…might be whatever a ‘normal skeleton’ is supposed to be. And Sariel isn’t infertile, as far as Alphys can tell.

“edge can’t have kids, right?”

“dunno,” Red says emptily. “he never did any a that stuff before. you know that. you _saw_.”

Sans shakes his head numbly. “why doesn’t your brother know how to speak?” Sans surprises himself by saying. It’s a dissonant, crackling hiss.

“I taught him Hands for privacy in hostile situations,” Red gestures shortly. “He was too young to remember and lost the rest.” He’s lying. Sans is trembling at the edge of his endurance; he decides to worry about it later (<strike>don’t forget</strike>).

“why’d you think never telling him about sharing souls would protect him? from _what_?”

“funny thing bout that,” Red says, voice carefully neutral. “guess there’s some things monsters here jus’ _don’t do_ to each other.”

Sans feels the magic inside his bones freeze solid, hears Red’s voice through yet another wall of gelatin.

“never heard bout anything like that,” he manages after a minute. His eyes are still working, but barely. “i’d know if...”

Red lets him trail off, then asks a question.

“you do any a those handjobs i heard about for money?”

Sans narrows his sockets, trying to read Red’s expression. There isn’t one. “no,” he answers honestly. Monsters give each other money for all sorts of reasons, but it doesn’t work like that. “i mean, yeah, some of em gave me money after, but… not like you’re talking about. with humans around here, around a lot a places it’s…different. ‘s changing a little now, but some can’t eat unless they got money.” There's still human money on his bedroom floor from back when he was messing himself up. Opinions seem split on whether this was meant to be an insult or flattery, but Sans doesn’t care either way.

“wasn’t like that.” He doesn’t say what it _was_ like, and Sans doesn’t ask. Yet. He’s glad Red’s not looking at him, but turns out it doesn’t make a difference. “lotta people wanted to feel good, cause everything else felt like shit all the time. but no one, no one felt like they could…” Red trails off, and Sans lets him. It’s only fair. “...well. jus’ bodies, but still better than nothing.” He sighs. “talked with some other folks who used to do what i did. sometimes someone touched em in ways they didn’t like, didn’t take no for an answer.” Sans feels himself tense. Feels yet another part of himself leave; he can’t help it. Sans knows what kind of humans Red’s been taking out. When Sans looks into something, it’s been looked into.

“if they told me who, i gave em what they had coming.” Red’s hand comes up in an aimless gesture before he puts it away firmly. Red eye lights flick toward him; Sans doesn’t think he flinches but Red exhales knowingly anyhow.

“rest of the time it was usually some lv-y sap losing their shit an trying to ice me for the exp,” he sighs. “or paps, once he started wanderin’,” he says in a much colder tone.

Sans got enough in the Judgement to have a pretty good idea how Edge had spent the majority of his childhood. It doesn’t get any less horrific to think of any iteration of Papyrus being raised in some kind of sealed cave and left on his own for days at a time, sometimes longer, even when that might have been the only reason he survived to adulthood. It just sucks more. Red’s lost in all the extra space between himself, mumbling.

Like he’s never said this before. Like once he started...he doesn’t want to stop. Like Red can say it to Sans, because Sans knows the worst already. And because the worst already happened to him, too.

“but even after… paps got out. i never...never wanted him, to have, have to-”

His eyes fizzle-shake, and he shoots a resentful look at Sans. He’d never wanted his brother to have to kill anyone. Never wanted to see that first spark igniting the violence seeded in him. Sans can relate; he probably wouldn’t want to be reminded of that catastrophic of a failure either.

(He doesn’t think about how horrified Papyrus had been when he started crushing things by accident when he got upset. Doesn’t think about holding him, talking him through it, teaching him to be gentle. Showing him patiently how hands need to be careful and covered, and that hands don’t always tell the truth, and that sometimes you need to ignore what they say even when they do.

Doesn’t think about the shock and horror on Papyrus’s face when he realized Sans _had_ to do what Papyrus told him to when spoke in a certain way. Sans hadn’t even known he was crying and shaking as he methodically cleaned his own room because his little brother, still shorter than him, _told_ him to. Not until Papyrus was holding him, letting him feel he didn’t mean what he said, not like that. Talking him through it and keeping Sans from hurting himself until they figured out together how to make Sans stop cleaning, how to help Sans ignore what Papyrus told him to do. Turned out they both got better with practice.)

Despite the fact that Edge had killed literally over Red’s dead body, it’s obvious Edge had ended up taking Red’s example, and then exceeding it. His LV’s higher, even if it’s a technicality. But Sans watches Red’s face carefully even through all the layers of separation, and he can see there’s more to it than that.

“i managed until then,” Red huffs reluctantly. “when he got a lil older.” Until Red had broken the peace of Grillby’s, he means. And what followed. “helps that he acted weird, an’ mos’ people assumed he didn’t have anything worth stealing.” His voice gets hollow, and another Sans peels off when he parses out the buried meaning there. Funny how Frisk can’t unmake anymore, but Sans still _feels it_ like they can. All sliced up into layers, the edges grating and bleeding.

They assumed Edge didn’t have genitalia, and it was unlikely to have come out in a situation like that. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for Red. The implication being that it had, probably at some point when he’d been forced to earn G with his hands for whatever reason. And Red had made sure none of his attackers ever told anyone otherwise in the most final way possible.

To defend himself (if he’d actually been able to; Sans doesn’t ask and Red doesn’t offer), to keep his brother safe from anyone trying.

The idea that any monster, even soul-wounded and lv-maddened, could be depraved enough for an attempt like that on a _child_… well. Red’s reasons for keeping Edge in stripes makes a bit more sense now. One more layer of all-too-feeble armor around his brother. Combined with the rigid unwelcome of his skeletal physique...the unlikelihood of gratification other than humiliating or hurting him in a fairly mundane way without some seriously creative thinking…

It had almost been enough, combined with Red’s careful culling.

Up until Red went and got himself killed, of course.

Considering the circumstances and his reasons for doing so, Sans mentally recalculates the amount of killing Red has done.

_Much_ more than immediately apparent, even to Sans. And that’s saying something. Killing your rapist so they don’t try the same on your child-brother is about as close to justice outside Judgment as you get.

“it was different later,” Red elaborates hoarsely, surprising Sans. “p-… edge took care of it himself.” Red opens and closes his sockets slowly, but his eye’s still wonky. “he had to. woulda made ‘im look weak otherwise, and even if i…

Fuck. Red’s still defending his brother, even now. Maybe especially, since he couldn’t do it then.

“i had to let _him_ do it. once he got five LV, no one but asgore could take him. i had to.”

Once Papyrus had gotten a taste for it, at least. Edge. It’s _Edge,_ not Papyrus. Not his...

“doesn’t sound like it coulda been avoided,” Sans says, shocked to realize he means it.

They look at each other for a long moment. They don’t have to speak to acknowledge that something fundamental has changed between them. Now that they’ve proven they can destroy themselves utterly….now that they _have_….they can’t deny they could also just… not do that. That they can _choose_ not to.

Red’s gaze drops first.

“maybe not,” Red tells the tabletop meekly.

“sorry,” Sans admits to the red booth seat.

Sorry Sans made it like this between them, that it came to this at all.

Sorry for what he’d forced Red to tell him. Sorry that Red an Edge bought each others’ lives at the cost of their sanity. That what they’ve done to each other was at least as bad as what anyone else did to them, and that the fact that they still love each other just kind of makes it worse.

Because Red is Sans, Sans can’t not know how badly Red wishes he didn’t have any genitalia, and more than he’d like to about _why_. It’s likely he’d just vaguely hoped to spare his brother pain in his body, loneliness in his soul, and otherwise just didn’t fucking think about it at _all_.

Sans has to admit, even in this state, that genuinely believing he didn’t have any genitalia for the vast majority of his life had probably spared him specific varieties of unpleasantnesses among humans. Back before he’d gleaned enough experience to know how to avoid those situations.

Before Sans had made recreating the abuse he can’t remember into a full time job. If Sans is gonna cut the bullshit, he might as well dice it, but _god_, that’s a bitter pill.

“why do we even _have_ that kinda stuff?” Sans drones. “i know why _humans_ do, and ours doesn’t...it doesn’t _do_ anything.” He flicks a curl of wood off the table with resentment he can’t actually feel right now. “what’s the _point_?”

Red stares at him for a long, disbelieving moment. Then, unexpectedly, his expression softens; Sans realizes in this rather specific context, his rhetorical question might actually have an answer. He flinches back from it, but Red shakes his head reassuringly.

“you..? okay, yeah. you really don’t...” He exhales, then for some reason glances at Grillby. “’s for tasting magic and making you feel good,” he informs Sans shortly. “same exact reason buncha other monsters got it, too.” The corners of his smashed grin twitch. “well. it’s _supposed_ to feel good, make you wanna come out.”

Sans just stares at him.

“you watch all those nature shows with that human piece a yours,” he says, frowning. “jus’ about everything that’s alive has something like that. some lil button jus’ for fun, but it makes ya wanna do the rest of it.” Red huffs, humorless but still soft as he touches his sternum lightly. Then, he meets Sans’s gaze hard and won’t let it go, swollen eye and all.

“you…” Red’s realizing something; Sans has not the slightest clue what. “you gotta know something,” he rasps, but it’s fervent, not corrective. “yeah, so it’s broken. doesn’t work how it’s supposed to.” Sans can’t look away; Red continues, just as merciless as Sans has ever been because he _is_ Sans. “but _we_ didn’t break it!_” _It’s a desperate, emphatic whisper. “...fuck. you can’t remember….” Grief creases Red’s face, not nearly as distant as it should be after what they drank. For himself and for Sans, who is also him. “paps was a lil baby once, too. jus’ like sariel. and so were _we_,” Red hisses. “it’s _not_ our-”

“don’t,” Sans barks quickly, a thousand miles away. This detachment won’t last, and he knows some things can cause breaks that might not be reparable.

Even now, something inside Sans can still only deal with the way he is…if he lets part of himself believe he did it to himself. He’s fucked up because he let those humans use him. Sans let them do whatever they wanted until it made Sans’s body sick and dirty, made him create places they could fuck him in. That’s what gave him that feeling, made him _want it_. _He_ did it. It’s Sans’s fault.

“it isn’t,” Red insists treacherously. “that part isn’t.”

Sans doesn’t _want_ to know why blaming himself is easier, but he knows anyways. The worst part about what had happened when Sans’s hand had slipped that time with you is that Sans’s body had tried to _tell_ you something. But it’s just his body. It can’t remember or speak. It just feels, so that’s what it had made Sans do. When you were part of his mind-soul-body, it could make you do that, too.

Those feelings weren’t what had happened the _last_ time Sans’s soul had merged during the abuse, which would have been...the last time before you. There would have been disgust, fear, hate...all the things that Sans used to roll around in when he was messing himself up. Those feelings were what he’d have felt right before his brother had erased his memories, when he’d been…older (<strike>old enough</strike>).

When Sans had accidentally merged souls with you the first time, his body had grabbed him by the throat and told him exactly what had happened the literal _first_ time he’d merged. The truth he couldn't remember came pouring out as soon as his soul had touched yours. It screamed _danger_ at you both the only way it could.

Sans’s body had thrown both of you mercilessly into the memory-experience of someone who couldn't see, speak, understand, or really even form thoughts. Someone who had absolutely no knowledge, no agency, no control. Didn’t know what a body, a ‘self’, or even a soul was. Nevertheless, Sans’s body had made you both endure the experience of an inherently blameless infant that Sans’s body remembers being.

Sans isn’t ready to let that infant exist yet, even though it’s him.

(<strike>Sans and Red, the same tiny baby.</strike>)

But Sans can’t tell Red he’s wrong, either.

“maybe,” Sans replies shortly. The left hand doesn’t know what the right is saying. “don’t say shit like that to me.”

“…okay.” Red makes a throatless swallowing noise, and Sans looks at him. Red just stares at the tabletop, but Sans sees that each of them hold truths the other can’t handle yet. “maybe someday,” Red adds.

Red’s trying to help him. Not to get something out of it. Not because he’s rubbing it in. He just wants Sans to know, to help him...feel like he’s…

(<strike>Red </strike><strike>_remembers_</strike><strike>. He </strike><strike>_knows_</strike><strike> it’s not their fault </strike><strike>they’re like this</strike><strike>.</strike>)

This is absofuckinglutely unbearable, no matter what Sans drinks.

Well, Edge and Papyrus are almost here anyhow. Neither Sans needs to say anything about it; they’ve been watching their progress this whole time.

Red doesn’t look up, but nods approvingly when Sans’s hand lifts to call for the final round. At least Sans isn’t alone. Without the rest of him here, it’s easier to admit that even this fucked up version of him is better company than none. They drink what Grillby brings them together with an ironic little toast. It’s perfectly clear, much like the aphrodisiac drink every monster knows how to order. This does not do the same thing.

What Sans and Red drank earlier is what Lola drinks.

That’s what filling the spaces between their souls right now, keeping everything from touching. It’s how Lola stays alive, her shattered soul always glued together by what Grillby provides, her life made bearable with the rest of what he and everyone gives her: food, community, company, respect, and love.

This clear drink removes it, and something occurs to Sans belatedly.

“you dunno how to take it out, do ya?”

Red looks at him blankly, and Sans sighs. “i can take determination outta people. suck it outta you, turn it to something else, then puke it up.”

Still blank.

“you want me to?” Sans must seriously feel bad about this or something. He doesn’t know why he’d offer otherwise; he only does this for family...and Red’s not…

Shit. He _is_. Well, he’s worse than that, actually. He’s Sans. Red looks at him like he’s staring down the barrel of a gun, then shakes his skull. Sans is too fucked up to puzzle it out at the moment, but he files it away for later.

“bottom’s up, then,” he mumbles, and clinks the glass against his teeth once more.

“so, what’s the collar _really_ for?” he asks once their glasses are empty again, and they wait.

Red grunts. “collar keeps ‘em offa me,” he says gruffly. “if they got enough mind left ta see it. monsters around snowdin started putting collars on people they...” His expression wobbles out of tune, then firms back up. He starts over.

“dust someone in a collar, even jus’ mess em up, and you know someone else bigger an’ meaner’s coming for you after. if you see someone without one you know they’re either free exp, or they’re the worst you’re gonna have to deal with. roll of the dice, really.”

Sans scowls. “how would anyone not know already? were were down there so long it’s not like you didn’t know everyone inside n out, whether you wanted to or not.”

“weeel, hawt _dawg_,” Red says in a mock-folksy lilt. “you all get together for cuddle parties on gyftmas, too? roll around on the ground playin’ tug n tickle three bodies deep from waterfall to new home?” Sans isn’t sure what gives him away, but the look on Red’s face when he sees he’s not exactly wrong…interesting, to say the least. Shuts him right up too, so at least there’s that.

“you’re not there anymore,” Sans points out. “why not just take it off?”

Red’s expression drifts into something dangerously bland.

“why the fuck would i wanna do that,” he says very, very quietly.

It’s not a question.

Sans realizes belatedly that the collar might be functioning as a metaphor for other things. Then he realizes he can’t really focus on it the way he should.

“guess you wouldn’t,” Sans says quietly. If it weren’t for the pain choosing that moment to thread into him like white-hot wires, he’d get a good chuckle out of the way Red’s expression goes slack for a second. Then of course, it also goes twisted with pain.

It’s happening. They start to shake and curl up at more or less the same time.

“fuck,” Sans spits resentfully, tries to breathe through it before he makes it worse. “how’d’you fuckin _stand_ this all th’time?”

“not the same,” Red grunts. “deet we make ourselves’s different. think part of this not-so-fresh feeling’s the _making_ it part.” He pants for a second, then continues. “really did a number, didn’t we?”

Sans had said anything he knew would make Red tell him what he wanted to know, no matter the cost. He said things he knew would hurt the most on top of it, because he hates Red the way you can only hate yourself. Red had hurt him back twice as hard by actually answering his questions, and broken a promise by doing so. To you.

He agreed not to tell Sans anything that would hurt him, and Sans had forced him to do it anyways.

“sure did. fuckin side effects a being a skeleton,” Sans replies, gritting his teeth. “shit’s supposed to keep us alive, and instead it’s killing us for bein’ assholes. you got the same’s me underneath, good ol p and j. guess we really doubled our fun.”

“hhh...” that strangled sound might have been a laugh.

“edge knows what ta do?”

A few faint pants precede the answer. “’course he does.”

“see ya in a while, crocodile,” Sans says, tries to smile. “you can stay here to ride it out ‘f you want.”

Red grunts, since he can’t shake his head. Not anymore than it already is, anyhow. “this’s _yer_ place,” he grits out painfully. Like he’s not as used to this as Sans is.

Welp. That's fucking sad as hell.

“you’re _me_,” Sans points out. The last thing he manages to see clearly is Red’s face going unexpectedly soft.

“i know,” Red whispers harshly. “… m’sorry-” The words throttle themselves into strangled sobs that sound exactly like Sans feels.

“m-me too,” Sans hiccups; he can’t see anymore, so he doesn’t know if Red hears, and Red can’t speak, so he can’t tell Sans if he’s full of shit or not. Oh well.

Sans feels the table come up and slap his face, and then he’s fairly preoccupied with not drowning under the first wave.

He screams for a little bit while the determination his human traits make in response to harm starts eating away the love-hope-compassion in his monster’s soul. The sandy surf scours him raw, then beyond. Dripping out and dusting, drowning in the bitter salt of his own shitty choices.

Sans feels himself lifted into familiar, beloved arms.

“paps,” he whispers, and then the shaking takes him again.

“IT’S ALL RIGHT, SANS. I’VE GOT YOU.”

Sans makes a messy, childish noise through chattering teeth.

“DON’T BOTHER TRYING TO EXPLAIN,” Papyrus replies confidently.

Shit. Papyrus knew. He fucking _knew_, and he kept it to himself. No wonder he was so fucked up when they got here, and he tried to deal with it alone.

“IF ONLY YOU WEREN’T SUCH A LUSH! WELL, I’M SURE THIS WON’T BE THE LAST TIME I SHALL HAVE TO NURSE MY DRUNKARD BROTHER BACK TO HEALTH WITH MY STAUNCH AND VIRTUOUS DEVOTION!”

Sans spends a little while groaning and writhing with it as he’s carried somewhere, then goes limp and panting in his brother’s arms. He’s joggled slightly; he hears the bottle get uncapped while Papyrus drinks. Ahh, got into his phone again. He doesn’t begrudge it. He’s sure Grillby won’t, either.

“I’VE CALLED FOR REINFORCEMENT.”

Just the one, then. Sans’s soul lurches, then immediately gives up. It’s not like you haven’t seen this before, and dying in space fifty times in a row was probably worse. (Ok, probably not but whatever.)

“n.n.n.nhh,” he tries.

“THAT’S TRUE! HAVE YOU TRIED CRYING ABOUT IT?”

Good point. He does that for a while. Until you get here. You’re feeling this too, and Sans knew that. He _knew_ and he did it _anyways_, which is partly why Papyrus is going to have to stay on his toes for a while to keep Sans from dusting right in his arms. He promised to ease your pain, and instead he’s causing more.

“SANS HAS BECOME ILL DUE TO OVERINDULGENCE,” Papyrus informs you brightly. Well. It’s true that what Sans drank let this get a lot worse than it already was.

“He has a...hangover?”

“IT SEEMS SO,” Papyrus lies cheerfully. “I AM HERE TO REMIND HIM THAT HIS DRUNKARD WAYS ARE NOT WITHOUT THEIR COMEUPPANCE.”

“I, um. Papyrus?”

“NNYES?”

“This seems a lot… a lot like when Frisk used to do the thing.” Papyrus takes a deep breath, but Sans doesn’t want his brother to have to lie _for_ him as well as _to_ him. It’s not fair.

“me n red had a f-fight,” Sans hiccups softly. Paps was right. The crying always helps get the pain to spend itself. “’m sorry.”

“Did he do this to you?” Your voice is hard.

“this’s--” Sans manages, then all he can do is groan for a bit. It’s an awful noise, and he wishes he couldn’t hear it. It subsides a little, and after a few harsh pants he manages to tell the truth. “did this to m’self. ‘s my fault, okay?”

“Sans...”

“it’s _my fault!_” Sans screams, then shudders hard as Papyrus quickly cups his occipital bone with a bare hand. His brother’s magic flows into the back of his skull, keeps him from rattling himself apart. Keeps that little slip from shaving his HP to nothing. He feels how badly Papyrus wishes he could do what Sans does, and spare his brother this agony.

“THERE’S NOTHING TO BE DONE, SANS,” Papyrus reminds him adamantly. “AND WE ALL KNOW YOU’RE MORE THAN UP TO THE TASK.”

Papyrus lets you know Sans is sorry for yelling. Sans loves his brother so much. No matter his state, that harsh caw always makes his problems seem…well, not surmountable. Just potentially _finite_. He can hear your upset breathing more clearly when his brother’s healing him, keeping his HP steady even as his soul eats itself. It does so at a pace it can regenerate, as long as Sans doesn’t keep making it worse. Alphys’s process might ease this considerably; it has for Papyrus the few times it’s been an issue and Sans wasn’t able. But with Sans’s low HP it also might just instantly kill him, and Alphys won’t allow it.

Maybe that’s why his offer frightened Red. Huh. Especially since he’s Chara, too, but Sans isn’t a machine. He can make choices. Unless someone steals them, like happened to Red over and over again. Seems like that’s pretty much the story of his life.

And Sans blamed it all on him, rubbed it in his face. Blamed himself, then made it a double. Heh. Oops.

The next wave hurts enough that Sans just kind of passes out. Unfortunately, he also wakes up. Oh. Apparently you and Paps are having a slight difference of opinion about something.

“HE _IS_ SANS,” Papyrus is saying. “THE ONLY WAY FOR HIM TO NOT KNOW YOU WERE DISTRACTING HIM WAS IF YOU ALSO. DIDN’T KNOW.”

Sans can hear your breath go shaky-scared. “There were_ other ways_ to-”

“THERE _WOULD_ HAVE BEEN,” he corrects, almost managing gentleness. “BUT THIS IS THE ONE THAT HAPPENED. THIS IS THE, THE ONE YOU...” Only Sans can feel his brother’s deep shudder, and why it’s happening. Because Papyrus is touching him, he knows Papyrus regrets tricking you into distracting Red for him, even though it’s you who looked ahead like he’s always telling you not to.

Because checking made it so this was what Papyrus already decided, the same way waves become particles once they’re observed. Papyrus always sighs and rolls his eyes when Sans tries to talk about it, says it’s not like that. Says he doesn’t ‘get’ math. He doesn’t now, because Sans isn’t talking. Can’t speak at all. But because magic and souls are quantum entities….that is how they behave. Papyrus knows intuitively that the act of observing changes what is observed. This wasn’t what happened until you looked. Sans and Papyrus still had to decide anyways, no matter when it happened. They’re responsible for their choices.

And now Sans is dying at the same rate Papyrus is preventing it, you’re hurt and confused and guilty and soul-sick, and Papyrus has now done to you almost exactly what you did to him. That isn’t like him at all. This isn’t like any of them, yet it’s also what’s happening, and this is why Papyrus doesn’t look ahead, but at the same time he doesn’t blame you.

It’s a trainwreck of (sometimes directly) conflicting truths, and truth each refuses to succumb to the others.

It sucks.

Sans does everything he can to project how much he loves Papyrus to ease the pain this is causing him, too. You’ve already taken the one burden they truly can’t bear, and he knows what it cost you. He can handle this one. And Papyrus can handle the burden of tricking you into distracting Red, so that Sans could hurt himself.

“BUT!! EVERYTHING IS FINE! BECAUSE WE CAN MOVE FORWARD FROM HERE, AT A PACE WE CAN ALL AGREE ON!”

Sans feels movement. Ahh. This is Grillby’s bed, and you’re cuddling in on the other side of Papyrus.

“Okay.”

“IT _IS __OKAY__,_” Papyrus lies hopefully. “IT _ALREADY IS_, AND IT IS GOING TO GET _EVEN MORE_ OKAY!! ‘IT’ JUST NEEDS A LITTLE ‘ENCOURAGEMENT’. WHICH I AM ALWAYS WELL EQUIPPED TO PROVIDE.”

Sans takes a few deep breaths, waiting for the next wave. But it isn’t here yet….so maybe….it _is_ getting better.

_You can do it_, he feels a sneaky phalanx trace into his occipital bone. _I believe in you._

A shuddering inhale, a tight sigh out….and Sans finds a part of himself that can believe him. Their resonance finally syncs, and it gets a little more true.

“EVERYTHING’S _ALREADY_ OKAY,” Papyrus says again, reinforcing it. The bed creaks again as you relax a little more. Sans still doesn’t know why you can feel it or why it helps, but he’s glad you can. It helps him, too. “BUT, DO YOU KNOW WHAT IS NOT OKAY? THAT INSUFFERABLE CANINE! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT...” Papyrus goes on in that relentlessly predicable vein for a while, and Sans doesn’t scream through the next wave. He just cries quietly enough to slide underneath Papyrus’s cheerfully annoyed monologue. Because you’re both here with him, and it’s helping. He’s not alone, and…

The door creaks open.

…_.Is everything okay? Do you need anything?_

“We’re okay,” you say quietly. “Thanks, Grillby.”

Sans shudders and sighs as the pain subsides even further. “mm...” Sans tries, voice all rusty like he never talked before.

“m’okay,” he grunts, and weeps to help it get a little more true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, so I know this has gotten rough as hell. If there's anything you think I missed with the warnings, just let me know.  
Same with any consistency errors; my brain's not been where it should be for personal stuff reasons.


	19. FLOOD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _water rising up on me_   
_thought the sun would come deliver me_   
_but the truth has come to punish me_   
_instead_
> 
> Tool - Flood  
https://youtu.be/DZNxJWIcwCc?t=270  
(link is to 4:30 since that’s when the song proper actually starts)
> 
> **[mentions of self-injury, memories of Fell awfulness]**

“I AM NOT A GOOD PERSON,” Papyrus croaks at the orange-pale ghost of the third person he ever murdered.

No big revelation. Just the same thing he’s been trying to tell him since they fucking got here. “THAT IS THE _PIECE_ YOU ARE _MISSING_.”

And once again his words must twist in the air between them, because whatever it is that this place’s Grillby _hears_ is something obviously different than their _meaning_.

…_.__Well, I won’t argue with you __in regard to your feelings about yourself__,_ Grillby says, although it’s not lightly. _…But it has been my experience that people who say that sort of thing are often better people than they--_

“_DON’T!_” Papyrus barks sharply. “STOP _SAYING_ THESE THINGS TO ME. I DON’T DESERVE YOUR HELP, AND OUR TAB IS ALREADY--”

…_.I don’t think you underst-_

“IT’S YOU WHO _DOESN’T UNDERSTAND_!” Papyrus gnashes out, and the rest grates free unwilling and inevitable. “THERE ARE SEVERAL WORSE THINGS TO BE THAN A MURDERER. I AM MOST OF THOSE AS WELL.”

Sans, delirious with pain, struggles in his arms….and the magic in his skull tightens around that awful fucking _retching_ sound. The one Papyrus remembers from Sans’s nightmares as a child, the ones where he woke up holding himself and shaking.

(<strike>The sound his brother had made the day they came here.</strike>)

Grillby finally goes grey when he hears that, draws back and just…_stares_ at them. Papyrus sighs, tries to calm his turbulent emotions because Sans still whimpering, even with Papyrus’s bare fingers inside his hood keeping his HP stable at 2. Papyrus’s fear and hate isn’t helping anyone right now. Might not ever again, and isn’t that the bitch’s tit. Endless fear and bottomless hate is what kept them both alive for so long, and now it’s just...useless.

Much like Papyrus.

“PERHAPS IN THE FUTURE, YOU SHOULD _BELIEVE_ PEOPLE WHEN THEY TELL YOU SOMETHING IMPORTANT ABOUT THEMSELVES,” Papyrus tries. “I CAN TAKE MY BROTHER HOME IF YOU--”

_...No_, Grillby says faintly, but it’s enough to cut Papyrus off sharp anyhow. _….__I much prefer that you…stay, __in fact__. For now._

Grillby turns and just walks away, heads all the way to the fire door and through it. He’s still grey, but Papyrus is starting to wonder if disgust is the only thing he’s seeing.

But his eyesight’s always been poor, and his mind has always been stupid. He doesn’t know how his brother made himself this ill, or what Sans was talking with his other self about. Who knows, maybe it was the shit Papyrus and his counterpart already...dealt with.

Papyrus knows what Papyrus did to his brother. After all, they’d just gotten done with some of it when they’d arrived. Monsters able to match Papyrus or even able to give him much of a workout had been few and far between underground, and there’s a certain satisfaction in having only been bested by himself. That hadn’t really been the point, though.

The point had been pushing him until he’d had to create constructs to defend himself in the encounter he’d opened. Even this Papyrus with his weak scenting could smell the reek of what he’s capable of, what he’s already done. Felt how thin the bone constructs were from the loss of magic, because they’d both pushed everything they had to make enough of whatever that stuff is. Papyrus doesn’t want to think about the nauseating blob his brother had nearly choked to death on to get here, but he can’t help it. He’s been sure Sans was about to strangle on it, that’s he’d lied again and somehow tricked Papyrus into ending him first. Eventually he’d gotten it out, put it where it needed to go, then gotten both of them the fuck out of there just in time.

But his brother had been so _weak_ from it afterwards. So afraid and sick. It’s why Edge had broken, begged for food to help Sans. Sans hadn’t told him it doing that would make him _sick_, and that fucking noise he made, that _noise_\--

Sans whimpers in his arms again, because Papyrus is ruining it. Thinking about things he promised himself he wouldn’t, the things Sans doesn’t want him to know. Touching Sans’s bones and lending him even more pain and hate and fear. Saying things he shouldn’t so Grillby will stop with his delusions, his questions, his excruciating _helpfulness_.

Papyrus is already ruining their new life too, because he ruins everything.

Papyrus is a ruiner. It’s just what he does. He ruined his brother, ruined their relationship, ruined their hope to ever have anything good. He knows how bad he is since he actually has the arrogance to be sorry for what he is, what he’s done, and what he will continue to do if Sans allows it. He’ll give Sans anything he needs, take care of him exactly how he wants it.

Papyrus even knows why, too. He knows why it is the way it is between them, why they play their little game. Sans doesn’t have to judge him. Papyrus knows what he did, and why he can’t ever _stop_ doing it. Not if he wants to keep Sans with him, keep him alive.

Sans doesn’t have to face the fact that it happened at all if it never _stops_ happening.

Papyrus does his best not to touch the ice-rimed wound that’s lain between them in place of the wall they’d destroyed by doing what they’d done to get here: the frozen truth that numbs him to the core.

Papyrus destroys everything he touches because that’s what he was _born_ to do. That’s why it’s so easy for him. Papyrus had learned a great deal about the world very, very quickly after the day his brother didn’t die after all. The day Papyrus earned his nickname. Papyrus doesn’t like nicknames. He’ll answer to them when it’s unavoidable, but he still won’t think of either of them as anyone but Sans and Papyrus.

It turned out the world his brother had been hiding him from was remarkably terrible. And he didn’t even die during his brother’s...convalescence, because he’d just _killed_ instead. No one even had to show him how. It had been simple and efficient. Easy enough to prove to him that Sans could have survived it easily....if he hadn’t been saddled with a sniveling, bossy little brat who always told him he smelled bad. If he hadn’t been forced to pay and pay and pay Muffet’s “rent” for a series of bubbles in stone to keep his brother safe, while he risked death and worse daily to afford to keep him there. A neat, circular trap built to suck the choiceless and vulnerable dry, and Sans had only escaped its cycle when his stupid little brother decided to do it first.

Papyrus returns abruptly from his trip down memory lane, because Grillby returns with a full glass and sets it down pointedly in front of him.

Papyrus looks up, doesn’t flinch. He’s seen the same expression on this face before, and he smiles thinly because he knows what it means. If Sans wasn’t still here and breathing in his arms, if he didn’t _need_ him, he’d welcome it. He’d lie down as easy for Grillby as he would have for Sans at Asgore’s insistence.

Grillby smiles back just as thinly.

If Papyrus doesn’t drink this, one of them will be leaving in a dustpan.

His tab is due.

Papyrus knocks it back in one fell swallow; the empty hits the table hard, and he hopes with all his might that it’s a poison that can finally kill him, somehow. Instead it thaws that frozen truth, and meltwater pours from his sockets. Oh. Not just his sockets. It’s from _everywhere_, his whole body trying to purge itself.

Because the hate and fear is….leaving him, and this is the only way he’ll let it go. Because he’s fighting it, struggling with all his might against the inevitable, because he _needs_ his fear and hate, except it’s _useless_, except _he needs it…._

It’s leaving so he can _think_.

Papyrus shudders and leaks all over his brother, their clothes, the table. It can’t be stopped, contained, or controlled. He wonders if this is how Sans feels all the time, shedding killing rage, utter despair, and nauseating sexual arousal right up the smellhole of anyone within a stone’s throw. It’s why he took up smoking, after all. But the monsters here really don’t seem to scent it. Not until they get close, and even then it’s like they don’t quite know what to make of it. Like they’ve never smelled a dusty monster before or something. Funny thing is, none of that changes how soul-crushingly humiliating this is. _Everyone_ can _smell_ him.

Papyrus knew the bill he’d run up here would be quite costly if called in. And it is.

There’s only one thing to be done, and that’s roll them both under Table 9, into the nest he’d done his best to recreate. He’d been hoping Sans would be more comfortable next to his old hoard, somewhere at least a little familiar. It’s the only way they have to ‘return’ to anything here.

Papyrus drenches their nest as well. He wishes it hurt; instead it’s a pleasurable and unwelcome catharsis. It makes him able to know himself without everything Papyrus has spent his entire life putting between himself and the truth. The pain, hate, and fear he filled himself with to keep from knowing the things he things he doesn’t really want to know.

The times he’s killed when he didn’t necessarily have to, it was just easier than something else would have been. The times he hurt people to get them to do what he wanted them to do, even if it was just to be even more afraid of him. And of course, all the horrible shit he’s done to the only person who ever loved him, and how that makes him feel about himself.

Pain, hate, and fear don’t need things like _reasons_. All the justifications he clings to just sort of collapse without all that stuff blowing them up like balloon animals to cast frightening shadows on the inside of his skull. Without that, there’s...there’s no _why_. Papyrus is alive not only because he’s so very hard to kill, but because he’s keeping his brother alive. And Sans needs to be alive, so….so, what, exactly? So Papyrus can keep treating him like shit? So Sans can keep making sure he does? So they can keep on hurting each other forever?

That little loop of logic is one Papyrus always stays on the outside of, never delving in to see its flaws, its obvious self-perpetuation, or the pointless void at its core. But he touches it so often the outside of that knot’s worn smooth, felted in place until even the sharpest fingertip couldn’t wiggle in to unravel it. What Grillby gave him is worse than poison, even though he might not actually survive what it’s doing to him. There was no mercy in that cup; this is a pure reckoning.

It sets fire to the knot, burns it away until Papyrus has nothing left but who he will choose to be without it.

Grillby, unaccountably merciful, comes to put his thickest black tablecloth over Table 9. Another smell cuts through the rotten bloodreek of Papyrus’s disillusionment as Grillby sets the table. Papyrus knows the scent of monster dust anywhere, although here it’s only smeared on objects; in this case it’s also baked into hardtack crackers.

Grillby puts his funeral atop the pyre of everything Papyrus has held true about himself for as long as he can clearly remember.

If nothing else, Sans seems soothed by the darkness the tablecloth creates. Maybe he thinks they’re back in one of those cave things, tucked away together long enough for Sans to sleep once he finally needed to. None of this is interfering with keeping his brother stable, and Sans is actually doing pretty well this time. He doesn’t bother checking him. He usually prefers not to unless it can’t be avoided.

It’s only said one thing when he checks his brother ever since the day Sans didn’t die after all.

_You’ll badly care._

The second half of a pun that only works when you’re reading it. It means both that he failed, and that he will continue to. Except it doesn’t, he’s realizing.

That’s the meaning Papyrus _puts_ there.

More stuff he knows, and goes to a great deal of trouble to keep himself from knowing. Papyrus knows a lot of things about himself he’d rather not, and all this is doing is making him feel how he feels about it. All the revelations...aren’t, really. Oh. Except. The reason Grillby made him drink that.

It’s what he’d been saying to Grillby; the thing Grillby keeps ignoring.

That Papyrus is a bad person.

Grillby’s _not_ ignoring it, and he never did. He’s just not acknowledging it, because it’s hollow, self-serving bullshit. And apparently…hearing it in the context of realizing, perhaps, the _nature_ of just how badly Papyrus has treated Sans…had crossed even this place’s Grillby’s line.

The thing about deciding you are a bad person, is that it’s a way of justifying your own bad behavior. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s an excuse to _keep_ making the same shitty choices over an over.

You do your worst, then just shrug and say, ‘Well, I’m a bad person!’

That’s what Papyrus has been doing his entire life. He does bad things because, well, he can’t really do much else if he’s _already_ a bad person, can he? Bad people do bad things. He doesn’t have to try, the awfulness just comes out...right? Except it doesn’t. He could have tried to do something better. He could have done a lot of things. Instead, he just lived down to his own expectations.

That’s a kind of giving up that’s worse than Sans ever tried.

Even like this, his whole self emptied out and at a loss for meaning, when meaning tries to offer itself...

...he rejects it.

_He doesn’t want to know._

Papyrus’s soul quivers under its own guilty weight, but just as he feels the break about to happen…

The comfort of another monster’s exposed soul lights the darkness. Not the darkness under the table; the impenetrable velvet cradling him and his brother stays just as nostalgic. Increasingly so, even as another joins it. His arms tighten as Sans stirs to partial consciousness, and they pull each other closer. Their faces meet with a faint little clack.

“puh...papy,” his brother grunt-hiccups into his nasal aperture. Then he just whines wordlessly, and Papyrus inhales Sans’s pain eagerly, lets himself hate it, just a little. He closes his teeth tight, does his best to be quiet. To keep his awful voice inside as much as he can.

“I’m here,” he whispers.

Because that’s the promise they’ve made to each other.

No matter how they suffer, they’ll do it together.

More souls appear to warm them like lightless candles, so near they must be beneath the other tables. No way to know if they’re being shared alone, or with others. Makes it almost bearable, but Papyrus turns away from himself anyways, turns toward his brother instead. Just like always. The teeth he carved in a fit of LV-madness to try and mark what he did to Sans into his own face, to make people see it (<strike>to warn them</strike>)...to maybe cut his voice out of himself(<strike>to save himself from it</strike>)... they let him grind out a harsh whisper this way when he locks them together just so.

“Does it hurt, Sans?”

“f-fuck you.”

Papyrus sucks the words into his skull, makes them his. Sans pulls him closer, his cold hand slipping under the back of his scarf to thread through his spinal processes. He grips tight as the next wave hits him, struggling until he finally lets out a tight groan. Papyrus feeds Sans his HP one by one to keep him right where he’s at, barely feeling the drain from his LV-salted ocean of health. And Sans offers little sips of his pain for Papyrus to suck down greedily until whatever this is wears off.

When this one ebbs, Papyrus suggests they sleep, here in this womblike darkness invisibly lit with the illusory comfort-concept of wholeness. It’s not theirs, but it helps anyways.

Papyrus feels Sans settle in and braces himself in reverse, relaxing into the anticipation of that dry snore.

Instead, Papyrus hears a voice he hasn’t in tens of thousand of years, dissonant tones and a crackling burst of static like a finger gently closing his foci in his skull _for_ him.

_Calling_ him.

He sinks through the floor in complete silence, leaving his brother’s already-slumbering arms empty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It might come off as though Grillby was ooc here, but please keep in mind all this was entirely from Edge’s POV.
> 
> Reader Powers include this knowledge: what Grillby gave Edge here was the exact same thing Papyrus drinks when he goes to Grillby’s. How it feels for _Papyrus_ to drink that can be read in Chapter 12 of Convenient Fictions. It has the same effect: Reduces fear (Bravery) and inhibitions (Sans), increases self-awareness (Justice), and encourages abstract thought and certain revelations without forcing them(Grillby). Papyrus also mentioned Grillby’s “milkshakes” when discussing the philosophical implications of what it says when he checks someone, or vice versa.  
In other words, the difference is because of who Edge decided to become.


	20. Hand in Glove

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meshuggah – Rational Gaze  
https://youtu.be/rkrjE4QRsys
> 
> This is a Gaster chapter.
> 
> **[abuse, mind control, Gaster being a creepy, soulless piece of shit]**

WingDings: Alternate for Garamond-Aster considers the amusing fact of his own nonexistence.

More of his absence exists here than in other timelines. His perception’s weak…as it currently stands. Justice is remarkably effective, even and especially for something like himself. Gaster. It’s a delightful nickname in his opinion; in fact, Gaster enjoys singing his version of Kiss’s _Plaster Caster_ with his own nickname filling in all the rhyme-blanks. He’s also been known to laugh until he cries at Mad Libs. It’s part of his charm.

Speaking of nicknames, he calls the Hand closest to him.

Not temporally or spatially speaking. The nearest available in kind. Which isn’t very, but there’s just enough nothing for him to wedge his font into. PAPYRUS is quite accustomed to listening to that little voice inside that tells him the most _efficient_ path is necessarily the correct one.

Until _he_ showed up, Gaster’s been absolutely unable to do anything about anything. And he still can’t do anything, except maybe change that. It’s less an arrival, more of a….hole in the kind of shape that Gaster can fit into. And there’s nothing Gaster likes quite so much as sticking bits of himself into other people’s holes!

And oh, here he comes, foci closed in his skull and unfurled around him in a vulnerable, manipulatable halo of math. His big, strapping skeleton, tottering up obediently like a poorly managed puppet.

“What On _Earth_ Have You Done To Your _Teeth_?” is the first thing Gaster has to say to this iteration of his brother. It’s not often Gaster’s surprised. This go-round’s already shaping up to be quite stimulating.

PAPYRUS gapes at him like a fool. Which is what Gaster created him to be, although there’s no need for him to know that. But he _does_ know, since Gaster’s nothing (ha) if not fond of needless cruelties. Need-to-know bases are overrated, especially when it comes to other people’s flaws. After a minute, PAPYRUS answers. Since he probably can’t not, even if he doesn’t _know_ the answer.

“It’s for (because of) Comic Sans Serif M(icro)S(oft)…?”

Very polite of him to use Gaster’s font. Gaster returns the favor.

“I SEE! WELL, IN THAT CASE, I’M SURE IT’S FINE. MORE IMPORTANTLY, HAVE YOU BROUGHT WHAT I ASKED YOU TO BRING?”

Gaster takes the infinitesimal drop of silver that PAPYRUS gives him and absorbs it immediately, wriggles convulsively as it floods him with its mercurial ability to impart existence. Not as strong as something made with the increased reality of the iteration of his brother native to _here_, but it’ll do for starters. Gaster can always rely on his brothers to make a habit of avoiding things they’d rather not think about. Leaving socks on the floor, ignoring their purposes, forgetting about droplets of useful substances lying around between the pages of _machines_...that sort of thing! Messy, messy.

Ahh….There we are.

Gaster feeds himself back through the nonexistent loops of the anomaly’s LOAD and RESET like a whipstitch, sewing himself faster and faster into the fabric of existence. He tightens the tension between it and the reality of his _non_existence to draw them together into a seam. Integrity pushes back into the timeline like a disease, decorating his disembodied voice with a visual analog. Gaster claws together fragmented memories and reanimates them, boils up into a shape that PAPYRUS can actually see. Well, that PAPYRUS _could_ see if his foci weren’t shut.

Sans isn’t like that. His vision can’t really be stopped. Even with his foci closed or interfered with, he retains a fair amount of awareness. Sans’s restless perception is a ceaselessly raw nerve, begging to be plucked like a harpstring. Gaster misses him dearly, but alas. His attempts to call him, _either_ of him, have so far come to nothing. The other PAPYRUS as well, strangely enough.

Gaster would love to know what on earth they did to make themselves so utterly inaccessible, but Gaster is nothing if not patient. Perhaps he’ll have a chance to find out…with this one’s help.

Gaster sighs with satisfaction. The increasing tension between his existence and nonexistence allows him a bit more breathing room after his feeding. He decides to indulge himself, considering this meeting will be equated right out of PAPYRUS’s mind once he’s ready to send him on his way. Find a truth and a lie, add them together, and they cancel each other right out! Lovely. If Sans were here, he’d definitely appreciate the demonstration of _applied_ mathematics.

Well, PAPYRUS is here. They're family, after all, and Gaster’s missed him too. Or he _will_ miss him, perhaps? Hard to tell with this one, sometimes. Shared traits can lead to unpredictable interactions, and Gaster doesn’t really tire of it. He decides to engage in a little smalltalk, since it will be or has been so long and all. He speaks in Comic Sans(Serif) M(icro)S(soft), since he can’t be here himself, and all those ellipses are rather tasty. There are certainly benefits to making children, despite sundry indignities one must resort to in order to obtain them.

“…it’s very interesting, what reading too much history can do. did you know there are things humans can feel that monsters can’t? unless they’re _skeletons_, of course.” Gaster’s warming up nicely, although he can’t manage a mimicry of Comic Sans’s speech impediment. One more inimitable little defect in his favorite collection of them.

“we’re the exception to many rules. If someone does something to them that makes them feel bad enough, they create another _person_ inside themselves who can feel it _for_ them. and if it keeps happening, well. more people will be required.”

“OH!! I FEEL BAD _ALL_ THE TIME!” Papyrus caws ingenuously, gathering together enough of what makes him himself to interject in his own voice, despite the circumstances. Fascinating.

“...heh. that makes sense. but the _really_ amazing thing about monsters is that we have the ability to make how we _feel_ into a...well. i hate to say a physical reality, considering. but in this case it seems to apply, despite magic and silver being the vehicle for it.”

PAPYRUS stares dully for several long seconds. Then he coughs, and it turns into an echo of the sound his brother makes. That retching noise that wrenches out of him when he’s all clogged up, a sound Gaster loves. The memory Gaster’s reanimating quivers with nostalgia, and he asks a question in his own font.

“How Much Do You Think Having A Brother Costs?”

“I...I don’t know(absolute)?”

“The Equivalent Of About A Hundred G For Someone Like _Me_,” Gaster simpers. “Breaking Someone Into As Many Pieces As You Can, Then Using Their Innate Talents To Make Those Subjective Experiences Into Reality? Or Rather… Infinite Realities?” Gaster grins drippily. “Priceless.”

“I DON’T...UNDERSTAND.”

Gaster sighs with exaggerated patience, pretending he doesn’t love the perfect foil for his corny and villainous monologue. The camp doesn’t fall far from the tree.

“of course you don’t, but i didn’t create you to be smart,” Gaster grumbles flatly in Comic Sans. “i’m saying i gave your brother’s human souls dissociative identity disorder on purpose, so i could use his monster’s body to create infinite multiple dimensions in which to contain his iterations. the first part… might’ve been an accident, which led to the _reading_ i mentioned previously. but i assure you once i realized, i made sure to make as many sans-es as possible.”

Gaster smiles and switches voices, then does something like a wink. It oozes.

“WITH MY _INTEGRITY_ TO GIVE IT A BOOST, IT TURNS OUT?? THERE’S _QUITE_ A LOT OF THEM!”

“What about me (PAPYRUS)?”

“Wh...what?”

Gaster’s _startled_. Oh my goodness; his precious imbecile is making relevant inquiry. If Gaster actually existed, he might have just come in his pants.

“Why am I(PAPYRUS) like this (infinite; immutable)?”

“What An _In_teresting _Ques_tion,” Gaster says slow and singsong. He might keep this one around longer than he planned. If he ever figures out himself why it worked the way it did, perhaps PAPYRUS should be the first to know. He never bothered telling his brothers that the house of cards he’d kept carefully balanced for so long had been about to tumble down around their nonexistent ears, necessitating a somewhat _hasty_ first trial of the machine. But...now he’s fidgeting, and...oh, he seems _terribl__y_ uncomfortable. Gaster wishes he had something he could use to lick that tempting mist right off his frontal bone.

“What _Is_ It, PAPYRUS?” Gaster asks, all fawning solicitousness.

“Comic Sans (Serif) M(icro) S(oft) is ill(DETERMINATION),” he says weakly, letting out a short grunt. “I have to (imperative) go back.”

Gaster does a decent impression of rolling his eyes. How ludicrous that Gaster gave PAPYRUS everything he needed to keep his saucy little big brother in check built right in, and this one just lets Sans send him backflipping through whatever hoops he sees fit. Well. Forcing this one to let his brother die would probably kill him as well, considering how dependent they’ve become on each other.

“Just A Moment, Then.”

Gaster counts off primes, pinching the memory of this delightful interlude right out of PAPYRUS’S recollection. Leaning in close, he wishes he had the capacity to savor the reek of Chara’s fear, cringing away from Gaster’s tainted nothing-touch.

Even like this, a barely-there sliver of Chara bleeding determination into Gaster’s brother, he’s not able to snatch them up and pull them free. Inaccessible to Gaster for now, but he smiles anyways and concentrates on his brother, the hand Gaster’s preparing to slowly turn into a glove that fits only him.

He’s not in a hurry.


	21. with full hearts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Polysics – I My Me Mine](https://youtu.be/JLFrJtCg8bU)
> 
> Okay! This isn’t a very good chapter! But it’s transitional and I finally remembered it doesn’t actually HAVE to be good, it just has to exist. I also decided to opt out of the archive warnings and JUST have warnings on EACH CHAPTER, because trying to anticipate every possible reaction of random strangers was giving me writer's block.   
Sorry for the delay!
> 
> ***
> 
> **[brief urges to self-harm]**

When she removes her gloves, Alphys’s claws are lacquered red, just like they had been the night of ARTOWEEN.

Oof. Now that’s a reminder right there. Sans is the furthest thing from respectable, but that’s the closest Sans has ever come to deliberately humiliating himself in public. Because if you’d asked Alphys to go somewhere, and he’d been sure for about five solid minutes you were _gonna_...well. He’d have come right up and asked to go too, and that’s more of a fool he’s made of himself over anyone. Except Toriel, but in this case everyone _else_ would have been there to see it.

Sans gives Alphys a cocked orbital, and the wiggly-lipped grin she lobs back is absolutely shameless. Well, not like he’d expect anything less from Pervy Al. He turns his eyes back to you in the hope of some mercy, reading the initial results of the exams Alphys did a while back. All of you are still trying to figure out exactly what you and he have done with your souls, in regard to the whole...making a promise thing.

It’s weird to think about. The Sans who invented the original...whatever it is...was some other Sans. The ones he tries not to think about, the ones who just folded up into him when they ceased to exist, all their pain and regret and missed chances and broken promises squeezing him like an accordion. Then there’s the _other_ other Sanses, like the one he’s not thinking about right now. The one causing enough problems to actually get his ass into this seat, for starters. The ones different enough they don’t just cancel each other out, hovering closer than Sans ever imagined they could be. So close they’re fucking _here. _(Well. The one he wishes was here the least is.)

You grunt, squinting at the lines of data. Sans searches for another opportunity to stop thinking about it, which he’s been spending most of his time looking for since you, he, and his brother finally vacated Grillby’s bed. You haven’t pushed him about any of it despite the fact that you were hurt by it, and Sans feels guilty as hell. Business as usual.

“So. I’m assuming you’re giving me papers to read instead of explaining it because it’s sexual?”

Alphys blushes, and Sans feels magic seethe across his skull. Alphys gives him that look that means she can’t believe just how thoroughly Sans won the lottery by finding you. It warms Sans’s heart to know she feels the same way about Undyne.

“I’ll...take that as a yes.” You’re smiling bemusedly at him now, pointing at the string of numbers indicating a lingering presence of Sans’s magic in your soul (he’d put some in the day before the exam, after all). Then you use the forefinger of the other hand to indicate the line of numerical values where the manifested promise you’d made to each other begins. You tap with the former.

“This is when Sans pushes magic in the shape of a feeling, right?”

“H-h-humans really have a way of p-putting things, don’t they,” Alphys says faintly.

“nah. that’s jus’ _them_,” Sans chuckles proudly, despite having to straighten the wavering magic in his skull with a rough little noise first. There’s nothing wrong with putting your magic in people, in yourself. You’re the one who made Sans realize how much of what monsters do, how they are, is based around everyone having time and freedom to do just that. But it’s still not something they really talk about, not like _this_, anyhow.

“But it’s different than sex things, because this one _stays_,” you continue vaguely. It’s cute when you--

You finger finds another string of numbers, and Sans freezes. That’s the key, the one that will stay even after you use it to take you wherever you need to go. It can make any door into one of the ones he makes. It’s _real_. That’s something only Sans can do, and this is one of the only ways that anyone could know it’s there. Thing is, Alphys is one of the few people who can do this kind of exam, and the only one who really does know everything Sans can do. The doors, the boxes, the phones...

Alphys would have noticed Sans’s...stuff he keeps in himself, and your key. But she’d never _say_ anything about it to him. It’s one thing to keep parts of him in your souls permanently, and one of those permanent things is the entire reason you’re both here now. It’s sitting right there on the sheet of paper in your hands. Sans is pretty chill, and almost as hard to embarrass as a child...but he’s still a _monster_. One that might actually crumble to dust right in this chair if you say what he thinks you might in the current context.

“that’s, uh, complicated butthole feelings,” Sans rushes out, invoking the nearest equivalent he can think of.

You stare at him, flatly unimpressed. Then you sigh and lean back. Sans relaxes, just a little. Still feeling pretty sweaty, though.

“Okay. Since I can’t actually _talk_ about anything, why don’t you two say whatever it is you’re allowed to say about it. And Sans can just fill me in later.”

Sans shrugs, relieved.

“T-t-the w-weirdest part is, I could do this myself,” Alphys muses. “I think a-any m-monster could.” Alphys slips into speaking with her hands, as absently impatient with her stutter as ever. “But I don’t think it would have ever occurred to them to do it, since the purpose...isn’t necessary?”

Sans huffs thoughtfully, brings up his hands to answer. “It wouldn’t work the same, either.” Alphys nods, acknowledging that your Self is also necessary for what this is. Without Integrity, it’s unlikely the bond would last after death, and for monsters it would be beside the point. Monsters don’t _need_ this sort of thing. And without the RESETS, _Sans_ wouldn’t have needed it.

If you weren’t human, you wouldn’t need it either.

“Can you figure out what happened when we changed it?” Sans asks. He sighs as Alphys shakes her head, even though he pretty much expected that.

“The activation thing you said happened…I only have your old scans to compare it to, not theirs. Without that, it’s mostly guessing. But I’m pretty sure it’s just what you guys assumed it is. And since he won’t come in...” Sans feels that wiggly, unpleasant feeling and shoves it back down. She means Red, who had refused to even acknowledge Alphys’s request before the shitshow at the machine, and again afterwards. No one was particularly surprised he wasn’t willing to have his soul weighed and measured. Sans shudders, and Alphys continues.

“It’s probably like it was before you activated the bond or whatever. Between _them_, I mean, except maybe more intense because of...you two.” Alphys gives Sans a speculative look. “The body continuity thing is pretty much what monsters who aren’t boss monsters experience. You just have to..._intend_ not to...include him. Like you said.”

Sans rubs his face. Problem is, Red has to actually try as well, and he’s got a feeling Red’s got some shit he needs to work out before that’s going to work like it’s...well. Not _supposed_ to, since there _is_ no fucking ‘supposed to’ for all this unprecedented bullcrap. He’s suddenly twice as tired as he was a second ago.

Sans looks at Alphys, letting a ghost of frustration tinge his features. “Doesn’t it bother you that we don’t have _words_ for this stuff?” She’s surprised, but nods after a second.

“We’re not underground anymore, and this is the kind of thing we need to be able to discuss the specifics of. There are differences we didn’t think of as differences before.” Sans gives Alphys a soft smile. She’s so smart. She blushes, then grins and waves her fingers dismissively. “Even if we die of embarrassment. The distinctions are necessary, especially with Reader and Tony and Frisk, and...” She shakes her head, a smirk tugging at her lips. “Did you ever figure out a name for that thing you say your teeth do?”

Sans narrows his sockets at her. Of course she’d bring _that_ up. “It’s not my _teeth_, Al. I can do it anywhere, they just _like_ it when I do it with my teeth.” The same faint frustration quivers across Alphys’s expression. But since it doesn’t have anywhere to go, she just lets it go. Not much else to do with it for now.

“It’s just touching, Sans. Monsters like to touch each other, no matter what they say. You know _I_ think it’s a bunch of bullshit.”

The thing is, when Alphys says _touch_, Sans knows she means a touch where a part of one monster’s body can become part of another’s, in a way that isn’t what you call “shedding”, but isn’t reproductive, either. Alphys likes that kind of touching, and it’s what she used to ask for in a way that gave her a reputation, a long time ago. And she probably still does, since Sans knows Undyne can do it with her mouth even though she doesn’t have any genitalia. 

Different from constructs in encounters, and different from crafting. And still different from... from what some monsters’ genitalia can push out.(The way his can do sometimes. At some point he needs to get over himself long enough to tell Alphys, since he said he would fill her in on anything new his junk did. He _will_. At some point.)

“Yeah, so why don’t we _talk_ about it?”

“Because we don’t have a special name for it.”

“So name it.”

“Me?? Why _me_?

Sans grins, equal parts proud and teasing. “don’t think anyone else is qualified, alphie.”

“Qualified for what?” you ask impatiently, and Sans realizes he got distracted again.

“sorry, babe,” he says, gives you a little wink. “guess alphie gettin’ all dolled up is givin’ me a case a hotbutt.” That’s a cheap shot, and Alphys’s glare is sweet as he continues. “we were...talking about how when i say touching, and when humans say ‘touching’, it means something different. same word, same...idea? but it’s different.”

“The pushing-touching thing.”

Alphys’s eyes widen. “P-pushing touching?”

“Yeah,” you reply easily. You know, like...” You make a gesture, and Sans rubs his seething face. “_Sexy_ touching.”

Your lips quirk up in a secret little smile, and he knows you’re thinking about how it feels. Well, so is he now. He clears his throat.

You don’t just think about and know, you say it right out. Because you’re not a monster, but mostly because you’re _you_. Sans has a much better understanding now of what you mean when you say things like ‘Frisk is basically a monster’ in a social sense, since they mostly talk like one. And Aaron’s formerly-an-anthropologist human Tony saves all that crap for his papers. As for Sans...he's starting to wonder if humans understand Sans’s papers at _all_, now. A monster would know what he means by “self, or “you” or “the individual.” Sans watches you check back through the numbers and annotations, wondering what they mean to you.

It was always easy underground to know what people meant when they spoke about themselves and others, using ‘self’ or ‘you’ for bodies and souls, "bullets" or "constructs" for magic in encounters. "You" or "self" when it comes to communication; "taste" and "smell" for eroticism; same for magic pushed out for sex, craft, or healing.

“hey, readz,” Sans says quietly. You look up from the page again, and he waits the minute or so it takes for you to shift your attention fully.

You never realize how long it takes, and it saddens him when he sees how impatient it makes other people. Mostly humans, but some monsters, too. Reminds him of a weird camera he found in the dump a long time ago; the slow clarification and emergence of the ‘instant’ photograph while you waited. He still has the pictures of Papyrus in his room; Papyrus has the single photo he’d managed to get of Sans sleeping at his sentry station squirreled away somewhere, too.

He loves watching your aspect slowly change. Dynamic and electrifying; watching your face is a kind of catalytic magic in him, like his barren magic _isn’t_ in you, or anyone else.

Okiedokie…here you are.

“what would _you_ call that?” he asks carefully. You think hard for a second, then frown and cautiously put your finger on the line of numbers indicating the place in Sans where the promise is.

Sans is feeling brave. He inclines his skull about an inch.

You think like you read your thoughts carefully from a weighty, dusty tome. Steady and implacable, right up until you’re not. Right up until you shift tracks and barrel in like a freight train, falling off cliffs and humiliating bowling alley assholes with implacable, deliberate recklessness.

Alphys shifts next to him. When he glances over she’s looking politely at the wall. Sans huffs sheepishly, realizing his genitalia’s actually trying to emerge right now. Talk about a case of hotbutt. Yeesh. Enough for her to catch the scent; she’d know, since it’s happened here plenty of times by now. Plenty of other places, too, since it just does whatever it wants. A weird glance once or twice from those who thought they knew what Sans was packing, but it’s not like anyone _says_ anything to him about it.

He looks back at you, because you’re ready to talk.

“So. The way you all tell each other’s magic apart is a movement, as far as I can tell. Like sound or temperature when it comes to physical...particles. The way they move and how fast they do it….that's what sound and temperature are. Used with purpose, both can be forms of communication. When it comes to magic in monsters’ bodies, I can actually feel the difference if I pay attention, or um,” you glance at him, “taste it, I guess? In a human way.”

“You’re p-p-pretty much right,” Alphys stutters encouragingly.

“Sans talks with touching, and...moving. When he moves, it...talks.” You frown. “I understand what he means when I shouldn’t be able to. Even when his hands say things, and he doesn’t mean for me to understand.” Sans’s face seethes, but it’s true. “That happens with other monsters too, like with the knowing without...seeing. But _more_ with Sans. And Papyrus too, I guess. I think that’s magic,” you say, then make a motion like you’re setting down an invisible box. Sans has no clue what it means. “And magic talks to itself and other things.” You sigh, look up from your invisible box and towards Alphys.

“Alphys, is there at least a name for the difference between monsters’ magic? A word for the difference in movement?”

“N-no,” she replies, that same frustration happening briefly. “We d-don’t have general terms like that. If I h-h-had a reason to t-talk about it, it would be because I was c-c-comparing two individuals, so it would still be specific.”

You exhale slowly, nodding. “And the difference is these _numbers_, right? Like, the differences are measurable, and they’re the numbers on this paper.”

“Yes,” Alphys gestures.

You make one of your big, wet fart noises. Sans huffs in quiet amusement like he does every time. God, you’re cute. Too cute, like you say he is, except in your case it’s actually true.

“Okay,” you say. “I read your paper-,” you mean Alphys, “-on how monsters’ magic numbers are like human DNA, and the numbers tell which monster is which. How non-boss-monsters have the same ones, where boss monsters’ numbers are unique. Which took forever, by the way.” Your accusing glance at Al makes Sans chuckle again, because you’re always complaining about how ‘inaccessible’ her papers and explanations are, when he has to constantly tell you the same thing about yours. Well. When it comes to your _papers_, at least. A lot of your explanations are really good, because you’re not afraid to just...say things. Throw shit at the wall until something sticks. Which reminds him.

“so, what would _you_ call it?” he reminds you gently.

“Well, it’s a reminder of a feeling. ‘Memento’ sounds weirdly serial-killer-y….but ‘bond’ sounds too...inevitable. But it _isn’t_ inevitable, we had to actually _do_ it.” You sigh again. “I have to think about it more.”

“you do that, readz,” Sans says softly.

“I have to take a dump,” you reply, and Sans rubs his face so he doesn’t laugh too obviously at the abrupt change of subject. He obediently drops you off at Papyrus’s toilet for your pit stop, shuts the bathroom door behind him, then steps back into The Hole and plops back down on the couch next to Alphys.

“think i should put a bathroom off here at some point?”

Alphys frowns. “I d-on’t really know how y-y-you’d coordinate that with P-p-p-papyrus’s puzzles,” she replies thoughtfully, then shrugs. “Is the c-current system unsustainable?”

“nah, ‘m jus’ lazy,” Sans grins, letting himself slide down the back as he turns his skull towards her. “you sure they’re doing good, alphie?” he whispers, suddenly anxious again. “it cycled through ok?”

Alphys offers her tremulous smile. “If you’re worried about their determination l-levels,, you can always just help them with it, right?”

“nope,” Sans answers shortly.

“Why?”

“cause they don’t want me to,” he whispers, watching those lacquered claws fiddle with a button. She and Undyne must have some really hot plans later. He’s happy for them. Then those claws reach for Sans’s hand. Fully entitled by her concern, Alphys’s hand unburies Sans’s from its pocket to squeeze reassuringly.

“all my bullshit’s gonna wear em out before their time, alphie.” The words tumble out hoarse and pleading. “and i can’t...it’s n-not...”

“Unless they ch-change their mind, they’re g-going to stay,” Alphys says gently. “They don’t want to go….away. They w-want to s-s-_stay_.”

“it’ll be _different_, al,” Sans warbles, pulling his hand back and covering his suddenly wet sockets with his sleeves. He tries to add that he doesn’t _want_ it to be different, but instead just makes a miserable-sounding noise. The bald facts about you being human and not a monster is another thing that’s firmly buried in the pile of shit he doesn’t think about if he can help it. What that means in the long run.

Alphys rubs his back, and he makes another noise. It always feels like she’s rubbing a sore spot when she does that, but in a way that helps the pain come out. And it does, leaking out of his sockets and into his sleeves. At this rate he really _is_ gonna have to do his fucking laundry.

“M-m-m-mettaton talked to them,” Alphys whispers softly. “They know.”

Sans whispers through muffling cloth.

“think they’ll know me?”

“I-i-in their own w-way.” She sighs. “In th-their own time, like a-always.” He can’t help it; he checks on you. Well, not _you_; on the door to the bathroom, which is still shut. It’s what he looks at since you yelled at him for “spying on you” when you’re doing that stuff. It was the solution reached after he explained he didn't know how else he was supposed to know when you’re done so he could pick you up.

Alphys comforts him for a few more minutes, and it works. And although Sans and Alphys don’t really jive with the way most folks...monsters...go about it, Sans still feels that intimate space open. The time when you can say things you usually wouldn’t.

“undyne’s gonna want kids someday, al,” Sans whispers quietly. Alphys freezes just how he expected. “but it’s ok if you’re not ready,” he continues, “cause she understands.” As in, Sans had already made sure to let Undyne know about Al’s family a long, long time ago, but touched bases with her again recently. Got a little more specific about Alphys’s issues with getting close to people, and what a kid would mean to her.

Potential for loss. He can relate.

“Okay,” her claws twitch, then just kinda sit there limp.

Alphys and Undyne are really special to each other. Even got human married years ago, which is kinda kinky but hey, Sans can’t judge. Heh. He and Tori couldn’t resist, either. Sans clears his throat and scratches under his chin, feels magic agitate across his skull. He really should check his mail sometime, those divorce paper thingies are probably in there somewhere from a while back. Few years, maybe. He’s supposed to...sign em or something.

He looks at Al; she meets his gaze. Sans grins sudden and easy, and Alphys comes right to him when he reaches out. They lie down together easy as pie, and Sans sets his nasal aperture against her quivery little nostrils for a nuzzle.

“you happy, al?” he whispers after a bit, sockets shut as she pets his skull the way he likes.

“Y-yeah.” She grunts as he squeezes her, too big around for his short arms to link hands, but it’s fun to try anyways. “Yeah, I’m h-happy.” She puffs out that electric-citrus scent into his skull. He sucks it in like a nice surprise, like birthday cake and lemons, like one of Papyrus’s parties, like the tang of his first surface snow.

“then i’m gonna try, too,” he whispers, surprising himself. Then he shifts uncomfortably, annoyed that his genitalia never really went away after earlier. At least whatever this shape is isn’t poking her. “you ever find out if there’s one that changes?” She knows what he means because she can smell it. She told him it’s sorta like caramel candies; dusty-sweet like he usually smells, just _more_. Same as most monsters who have genitalia, just smell a little stronger is all. She sucks in his breath one more time, then pulls back to look at him thoughtfully.

“N-non-permeable monsters?” He nods. “N-no,” she says, “B-but...you know there aren’t as many of us as there used to be.” Before the war, the barrier, and everything that came after. Probably way more monsters then, although Sans isn’t too sure skeletons numbered among them. He’s got a feeling bones on the monster scene took the scenic route through spacetime. Bleh. “M-maybe there w-were then, but we don’t...r-really have a way to know that.”

Sans sighs, but nods in acceptance. It’s pretty much what he expected. Plenty of monsters with permeable magic, like fire and slime elementals, can change their bodies to _seem_ to have genitalia. But it isn’t actually, although it _is_ plenty of fun. Sans’s _is_, just like a lot of fleshy monsters, except he _isn’t_. He’s mostly come to terms with having it at all, but….what it is, why it changes, if it even is supposed to be how it is...all of that remains a mystery.

And the only person he could really get answers from, well. He plans on avoiding him for quite some time, and he suspects the feeling’s mutual. Too much ugliness coming on to burn them both in too short a time. Sans feels...different about Red now, but it's still changing. Changing how he feels about himself, in a very expanded sense of the word.

Sans thinks again about asking Alphys if she can see it.

On the scans.

A place inside Sans where there’s..._nothing_, apparently.

But he’s too scared, so he doesn’t. The fear sweats its way out of him, and he wipes it away on his sleeve. Yep, this hoodie’s gotta go to the laundry for sure. Alphys just rubs his back, doesn’t ask why he smells like shame and anxiety. He’s been doing that a lot lately. But Al never presses him about it, which is part of why he loves her. And not just because he’s a monster, because monster souls love just by existing. Nah, he also loves her on _purpose_. It still feels funny sometimes, but he’s starting to wonder if that feeling’s part of his...human traits, since it’s always been there. He just didn’t really twig the difference until he felt _your_ feelings, got to know you better.

It’s been a while, so Sans compromises and checks the ceiling of the bathroom. Steamy. Apparently you decided to take one of your impulse showers (or the dump took an unexpectedly tragic turn, but he’s betting on impulse shower).

“mmm,” Sans sighs, presses his face to Alphie’s one more time. “think we’re gonna take off, actually. if that’s cool,” Sans says, giving her a squeeze.

“Y-you’re the least cool p-person I know, Sans,” Alphys says to make him giggle. “B-but it’s f-fine. I have plans later, too.” She waggles her eyebrows, and Sans darts a pointed glance at her lacquered claws, then winks. She just rolls on the couch shamelessly, stretching into the space Sans vacates as he groans his way to his feet. He stuffs his foot back into the slipper he apparently lost at some point, watches the scan papers join one of the piles.

“don’t do anything i wouldn’t do,” Sans rumbles suggestively, then remembers just in time to step into the hallway outside the door instead of right behind you in the shower. No cracked heads for humans or skeletons today.

He knocks, and goes in when you tell him he can. Then he strips off and sends his clothes to the laundry basket in his phone, which is starting to creak around the edges. He absently decides to make it bigger when he has a chance, then steps into the steamy heat with you.

You look so happy to see him. To his delight, you start washing him, too. He preens under the attention, making little jokes and thrilling when you giggle, doubly so when you complain and make the buttface. Then Sans jumps and bites off a yelp, doubling over and grabbing you for balance. His genitalia’s still out, he fucking _forgot_ about it and you can’t see it very well, and your hand brushed it roughly when you went to wash his pelvis.

“Sorry, babe,” you say quickly, but he just grips your upper arms and shakes, sockets clenched shut as breath hisses through his dripping teeth. He’s suddenly and excruciatingly aroused, and it’s pissing him _off_, and he...he’s…

“Hey, hey….it’s okay,” you’re saying, but it’s not. It’s _not_ fucking _okay_. He _hates_ it, he wants to just, just _grab_ it and rip it off his body, it’s stupid, it’s fucking…_he hates it…._

_hate it i hate you HATE you kill you i'll kill you_

Sans surfaces from the unexpected struggle against the urge to hurt himself with his face pressed against your neck. He’s in your lap, and you’re sitting in the shower, and he’s still shaking all over.

“what’d i do?” he says thinly.

“Nothing,” you answer gentle and quick. “You didn’t hurt yourself.”

Sans tries to swallow some of the water dripping in between his teeth, but it goes right through him. Oh, yeah. Because it’s surface water, not magic. Not from the underground.

Okay, so. Sans knows he does that sometimes. He _knows_. Thing is…

...this time, he remembers how it feels. Wanting to do that.

He remembers _why_.

That’s….new.

Sans takes a deep, drippy breath, and sighs it out.

Then he thinks about you and your invisible box, putting an idea inside. He thinks of the box in his phone, too, though. The neglected, creaky mountain of laundry he never seems to get around to, and he winces. But. This is _new_. A new thing and a new box, and he’s not up to dealing with it right now. He needs time to really think about it and look it over, and right now he’s got his full weight in your lap on the bottom of the hard tub. With slowly cooling water sheeting down over both of you.

So Sans puts that new knowledge into the new box, takes another deep breath, and you both carefully help each other get up. You keep asking if he’s okay, and he does his best to explain, but…well. Of course you’re used to it. This happens sometimes, and you’ve seen him get like that. Other people are used to _him_, and Sans just gets to take a fucking mental vacation or whatever while everyone else deals with whatever he does.

Sans feels messy and inconvenient, spilling all over everyone’s lives like a ketchup stain that won’t come out.

Once you’re both dry and dressed in your comfy clothes (which for Sans are his usual clothes), you pat the bed next to you, and he comes and sits down. He looks at you carefully, and yeah. You’re going to talk about it.

“We don’t actually have to live in orbit around _their_ issues, Sans. I know this has been kind of...a big huge deal?” Sans nods, since it has. “But we actually _can_ go on with our lives. Share our lives, do our thing. Help take care of Sariel, do work, spend time with people. Go on flying car dates and take baths. Drink coffee.”

“but...i _always_ avoid this stuff,” he quibbles. He and his brother both. Filling up time and headspace with jokes and minutiae, studiously helping each other avoid unpleasant things.

“I’m not talking about avoiding it,” you say firmly. “I know you probably want to tell me about whatever the hell all that was, right?”

Sans manages a nod.

“But you have a hard time talking about it. Just like most things.”

Face seething, he nods again.

“Hmm.” You walk on over and gather him into a hug, squeeze him nice and hard. It’s the best.

“Why don’t we just do it Sans style?”

Sans pulls back so he can look at you. It doesn’t help as much as usual.

“guess i don’t know what you mean?”

That pleases you for some reason.

“I mean, you and me only get rocky when we have stuff we’re _thinking_ about all the time, but not _talking_ about. Like the fight you had with Red.”

Sans flinches, looks down. He can’t help it, but...yeah, okay. You’re not wrong.

“’m not ready yet,” he whispers hollowly. It’s just the truth.

“So, why don’t we take a few days and have a cuddle marathon? Or a sex one, if we feel like it? Lately we’ve only been doing that at Grillby’s. Let’s have a me and you one, we haven’t in a while.”

Sans’s heart melts. He makes a shyly inquisitive gesture at his sternum, and you nod happily into his surreptitious glance.

“Yeah, I’d like that.”

“okay,” he exhales, feeling strangely relieved all of a sudden. Like a weight got lifted. “that’s….a real good idea.”

“I kinda want to catch up on one of my series right now too, just so you know,” you say as you both putter around, sending messages and gathering up a few things. Lots of sweatpants and prepackaged snacks, although there’s plenty where you’re going. You’d decided to do it in his room. It’s slightly more private than any of yours, since it’s technically its own dimension. Once you get there, settle in half on top of each other and your viewer pops up, he interjects before you actually start the show. He sits up a little, scratching the back of his neck.

“was wondering something,” Sans tells you before he talks himself out of it again. “you, uh. you...interested in looking at me?”

Your expression’s pretty surprised, and that makes sense. Sans’s magic agitates across his zygoma. “s’okay if you’re-”

“But you don’t want me to.”

“huh?”

“You don’t want me to look,” you repeat. “You don’t want me to see it, right?”

Sans gapes at you. “i, uh...”

“It’s okay.” Your face is soft with understanding. “It doesn’t have to make sense. All that matters is you don’t want it, so I don’t want it either.”

And that’s the thing. Sans knows monsters can’t see it, because they can’t see _nothing_. But humans see stuff in a monster’s soul if they put their magic in their eyes… and it’s not the same as what monsters see. That’s pretty much all he knows. And not only do you know about Sans having a place where there’s nothing in his soul…you know why it’s there, and maybe even some of what’s in it.

And that doesn’t change the fact that it bothers Sans to think of you looking at it right now. Looking y_et_, maybe.

“okay,” Sans says, the last of the tension finally leaching out of him. You smile, and he relaxes back into your loving arms.


	22. a hole in one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nina Simone – I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl  
https://youtu.be/eSbxJMkI-tI
> 
> :3

You and Sans watch nature shows in between your shows. You talk and joke, eat snacks and do a whole lot of not much. Despite the lack of exertion, this is still a long, meandering walk toward each other. Hours pass so much more gently when you do it together, time’s capricious fingers guiding you closer and closer. Kisses and nuzzles add themselves to murmurs, touching ventures from aimless to purposeful. You do that until your bodies start to seem like something in the way of something deeper in you, yearning sweetly toward him.

“I want you to call me,” you whisper throatily, hugging him tight and doing a wiggle-impression of his shivers. Sans rolls his spine in an impression of your erotic embraces, gives you his sexiest smile and slips a thin bone hand between you.

“that’s it,” he whispers absently, calling you both at once. “yeah….wanna touch you, darlin’. me too?”

“Yeah.”

He calls until you can barely see straight, and then he pulls. The shared, secret glow your souls make together never gets less astonishing, less poignantly sexual. It’s a miracle every time to see bone and flesh silvered and gilded, bodies made hallowed with souls’ unearthly light. Sans twines your fingers with his, a practiced motion with a shared goal you move eagerly towards. You sigh in sync at your combined touch, sinking comfortably into the calm, deep pool of each other. No goals right now. Just fat, satisfying togetherness.

Eventually you take a languorous tour of the house you’re building together. It’s strong and stable, huge and rambling. There’s room for both of you in it, along with all the other relationships and connections that follow you in the life you’re sharing like massive bouquets of balloons. You let them go to float safely up to the ceiling, and concentrate on each other. Sans is a little preoccupied, but he lets you drift over to what’s weighing on his mind.

Here’s the big wad of feelings Sans thinks of as “gross.” It’s smaller than it used to be. The ones not in the wad are all still _here_ of course, they just have new spaces and purposes. He thinks of them differently. A load of laundry, washed, dried, folded and put away one item at a time. Sans’s face is pressed against yours, but you see his eyes change texture as he lets out a shaky little huff. He braces himself, then shows you something new.

His feelings about the place inside him where nothing is, changing. The presence of an absence; a place bad things come out of sometimes when the edges clash against other feelings and experiences. Mostly emotions and impulses he doesn’t like and feels ashamed of. You give him a rush of reassurance, and he gives you the tiniest hint of his struggle in the shower from before. Less what it was, but more...his surprise that he knew _what_ he was feeling, and why. Because he usually doesn’t. It’s always been something that just...happened to him, but now it’s changing. He’s…._aware_.

There’s a hole in Sans’s soul, and it’s possible there is something in it. He knew that, but he didn’t…._know_ that. There’s knowing, and then there’s really….knowing it. Even with souls, it can’t be explained. You just have to feel it, and it turns out it’s easier to do together. It makes him feel safe, feel _seen_. Feel like he’s visible, like you can hear him. He doesn’t know why, it’s just… it feels…important.

(He wants to feel important.)

There’s a lot he holds away, things attached to this that he still needs to sort on his own. Sans pants and squeezes you with his hard legs, trembling as he bring you close; closer. He rubs you all around the boundaries of it, shows you its shape, the sheer _size_ of it. He turns his face into the pillow, moaning helplessly as you trace its edges with confidence and skill, show him how well you already know it. It’s always been here. It’s just _him_.

He weeps with it, the release of your acceptance that triggers his own, both of you acknowledging it and letting it go for now. Sans relaxes even more, starts to feel ready for something good instead. His soul opens like a flower, inviting you inside. All his lovely selves, blooming at once to tempt you with their sweetness. A thread of his saucy self, quivering with paired confidence and shyness. He _wants_ to tempt you. You make him feel like he’s sexy, desirable. You shudder with it, make a soft noise as you take the invitation, because he is.

Bad things fade further as you come in, and oh, he _feels_ you. He trusts you with this, with him, even when he doesn’t like himself. Even when he’s not sure he’s sexy, but….Sans trails off, moaning as you make him know it, feel it. You’re touching together, and it’s so strong. He tilts your souls closer, halving the distance perfectly in the way only he can.

Your love for his uniqueness sparks how much he loves you. A little weird maybe, but it’s his own capacity to love that makes him feel less like he’s bad-wrong-disgusting. It bypasses whatever it is that makes him think he tricks people into loving him, or like it’s all a big...mistake. But he can’t doubt his love for _you_, the way it blooms into a storm that shakes his essential being with its strength. Makes him feel like he can’t be that bad if he can love you this much. Because you’re so good, and it helps. It really does. He missed you, and this. You’re here, and this makes him feel just how _here_ you are.

Sans is always so open with you. He shares himself, and it makes you want to do the same. Not because you feel like you should, but because the way he is makes you want to. It’s a generous feeling, gifts piling up between you until you’re dizzy with power and helplessness at once. Giving, taking. Accepting each other.

Here’s something you’ve been saving. Not because it’s bad, but because it’s bittersweet. Took you a long time to really understand it yourself. You let him know/feel just how _lonely_ you were before you met him, before you loved him. The days where it cut sharp, the nights where the dull ache of it kept you awake. The dull emptiness of just accepting it, waking up and convincing yourself you’d always feel that way. A crooked little room, neglected and dirty inside. Boarded up so no one could see in, much less enter.

Sans moans and shakes with its strength, its depth. His magic tingles against you where it sheds, seeking out the space between where you exist like it has to answer that loneliness, even though he already did. So you let him feel where he came in to fill that painful hole in _you_, and pain assuaged turns it sweet.

Loneliness-answered dissolves out and expands into a sexual longing that feels so much like _his_….Sans’s body answers it, too.

You grunt in satisfaction as Sans rubs his pelvis on you, coaxing out his magic hot and soft at his pubis, then firmer as you share how much you like it. He gives you the sensation of his magic dilating and expanding, filling his pelvis until it feels heavy and lazy. So full of wanting you.

He groans with ponderous excitement as you shiver with his desire, because that’s what you want to _keep_ feeling. You want to _want_. Sans keeps rubbing his emerging genitalia on you but slows it down to draw out the feeling, then lets it become the environment for another sexy thing. He wants to push his magic inside too, and he’s getting ready to dip you both. Look at him, getting all vanilla and pushing at the start. He must be in love or something. Your dazed giggle pleases him; you realize he’s got your souls so close he can give you specific bawdy talk just by touching.

You feel the patient resonance building inside, the glacial progress of his internal momentum as it gathers, his body getting ready to share itself in the most profound way it’s capable of. Sans huffs his short, hitching breaths against your lips. You kiss his teeth and suck airout of his skull into your own lungs, ready to feel him together.

He tilts your souls even closer, and the softly poignant yearning he feels intensifies as his breathing gets ragged against your lips. Proximity helps him share how good pushing his magic out feels, as well as what you both feel when it goes inside. Easy and gentle but oh so deep, building it up so you know it’s coming.

You moan against his face; his hitching breaths sharpen as he teases it at the edge. The vibrating tingle, the swelling resonance barely held back….you feel it? You ready? Stars, yes….here it comes.

His breath gushes out as he coaxes his magic forth into himself, into you. Not just pleasure for its own sake, although there’s plenty of that. His magic enters slow like this, flooding in with a distinct sense of his essential qualities. Sans is so leisurely and precise, so delicate and full. Sans rubs his genitalia on you through the layers of clothes, lets the way it feels pour through him until it spills out into both your souls. His hips hitch into you hard, trembling and staying as he pushes magic _firmly_ to make an impression. A stamp of emotions and sensations traced delicately by unyielding bone fingertips.

You breathe out together, soft and satisfied.

Sans hiccups as the flood of his magic stills and ceases, but rather than lingering, he slides both your souls back where they go and flops into you, tangling your bodies up haphazardly as the rush of pushed magic takes it shapes and becomes: wanting. Wanting to share bodies, but you’re both so full of Sans’s magic you mostly just moan and paw at each other, whispering little scraps of delicious nonsense and feeling absolutely amazing.

It gets less sloppy after a while, hugging and leaning into each other to sit up a bit. Sans’s skull is tucked under your chin, your arms wrapped around thick bones and thrumming magic. You can feel it more when you pay attention and shut your eyes, especially when your soul is full of his magic. It’s a deep oscillation that gives away just how physically turned on he is. Well, that makes two of you. One hand’s holding your arm, thin phalanges squeezing now and then with a heady sigh. Sans’s other hand is buried under his waistband, moving gently inside his shorts.

Like he senses you noticing, he tilts his face up to sneak a peek at how you’re doing. Considering you have to bite back a moan at his lascivious expression, eyes filling his sockets and the crooked little space between his teeth hanging open shamelessly….hoo boy. Sans’s breath shudders out in horny satisfaction, tickling your eyelashes before he tucks his face under your jaw again.

“Got something special in there?” you say throatily.

“hmm…no bells n whistles, but it sticks out,” he informs the gooseflesh along your neck. “you interested in puttin’ it in yours?” His whisper is hot, emerging silky through teeth that are also pushing his arousal into your skin. It makes you shudder hard, ameliorating your sudden shyness. He leans back to get another look when you’re quiet, strokes your lower lip with his unoccupied thumb. You blush, uncomfortable with the idea right now for some inexplicable fucking reason. You feel a weird stab of guilt.

“I don’t think I’m in the mood,” you admit quietly.

“hey, there’s no right answer to that question. c’mere.” He gives you the same pleased expression as always, gathers you up and pulls you flush to his body with his free arm and a grunt of satisfaction. You exhale and relax, because that’s how he always is.

“i like what we’re doin’,” he says suggestively, eager to take turns if that’s what you’re into. Happy to take his first too, it looks like. His saucy grin makes you smile back as he presses his forehead against yours. He sees it, gives you a little hug with the arm he has wrapped around you. He lets out a breathy little hum of pleasure as his shoulder works enthusiastically. Sans rolls his forehead against yours, holding you close and touching himself.

“Me too,” you whisper, fondling the back of his pelvis through his shorts to make him sigh and wiggle.

“wanna see?”

“Yeah,” you say throatily. He pulls back a bit, hooks his stretchy waistband down under a knee before swimming his shorts the rest of the way off with his legs, cupping his genitalia close to his body as he settles back. For good reason, it turns out. Your eyebrows approach your hairline.

“Whoa,” you add dryly.

“...heh…” Sans goes iridescent as he gets a better look at it. “okay, yeah…maybe s’jus’ as well.”

“Try not to hit yourself in the face with it.”

He bends it out a little and tilts his head in exaggerated evaluation, then strokes a thumb along the top and gives you a wicked grin.

“can’t make any promises ‘f i get excited, darlin’.”

You stick out your tongue at him. He giggles, beckons you close again as he cups his hand underneath to stroke himself.

“Does our contestant have a personality quirk? Pet peeves?”

“feels like...” Sans sighs and shivers, savoring his own touch. “...like it’s gonna be wet.”

“Oh, really?”

“mmhm...” His sockets open, then close again. “meant it’s, uh….chatty. likes to shed.” He smiles when you stroke the arm that’s moving. “wanna feel?”

He takes your hand into his at your eager nod, shows you how he likes it. You curl in towards each other as you explore him together….sharing him. Fingers of bone and flesh twine, thumbs opposite to make a cradle for him to rock into. He hugs you tight and guides your thumb delicately over the tip; the next thrust is slick with a sheen of magic. Sans rests his bent leg up over your hip, the better to hold you tight as he fucks your joined hands, breathing in short, uneven huffs on your lips between pressing the heat of his teeth against them. He keeps getting wetter, and the desire to taste him grows keen.

“Hey,” you say softly. His sockets open to your voice, the points inside coalescing in a texture you only ever see when you’re with each other like this. Just that is enough to send a deep thrill to your core.

“yeah, babe?” he whispers breathily, face soft with love and anticipation.

“Can I lick you?”

His eyes flicker sharply, then shrink into harder, focused points. “you, uh...” His hand stops moving.

Your face gets even hotter, because you know why he’s surprised. You don’t go down on him when he’s shaped like this, and it’s never been a big deal. You look at what you’re doing, then move your fingers off his hard length and down to where the dense magic gets softer underneath his pubic bone, eventually blending out deep inside of his pelvis.

“I meant...here?” You clear your throat and look back at his face, where his surprise softens. “Is that something you’d, um, you might like?” He usually likes it when you touch there with your hands, and he makes some great noises when you put some pressure on it from the back, too.

He looks at you for a long moment, then inclines his skull a tiny bit. “stop whenever you want, okay? don’t gotta have any reason.”

You dart a look at him, then duck your head down and lick a broad stripe right under his hard length. Sans gasps, and the tremble in his legs is moderately gratifying. The magic here’s softer with a lot of give, tastes spicy and nice just like the rest of him.

“ohh,” he breathes shakily, “oh, that feels….” He makes a muffled little cry when you hum against him, and you take that as encouragement to go to town. And you do, but after a minute his magic’s responsive twitching is almost...movement? You pull back. There’s less space between the darkest part and his tailbone than before. As you watch….

….that space disappears.

“Hey, baby?”

He looks down, his questioning hum rewardingly breathless.

“I think another one of your thingies is coming out?”

Sans’s eyes flicker, and he reaches immediately down to inspect. His pelvis is definitely all filled in now, and his fingers tremble as he plies at its undeniable existence. He looks uncharacteristically sober, assessing the situation. It’s all Sans’s body, but the emergence was definitely separate from the one that comes out of his pubis.

It’s not like the shapes that have an opening and something else, or an opening that something else comes out of. These came from different spots. It’s two different things.

“There’s no rule that says it can only do one at a time,” you say with purposeful lightness. He’s weirded out, but he doesn’t have to be. “Is it uncomfortable or anything?”

“no,” he answers evenly. “no...it, uh. feels like anything coming from there does?”

“Are your hips okay?”

Sans flaps his knees a bit. “same as always.” He huffs enigmatically, then looks at you. “what’s it look like?”

“It looks like a butthole,” you report earnestly. “I could always find out if it tastes like one, too?” You give him your most winning grin, so he knows you’re trying to cheer him up.

Sans lets out a short, watery laugh; you can hear the hint of bitterness underneath. “every time i think it’s done surprising me, somethin’ like _this_ happens,” he adds, then sighs it out as he rasps a thumb over his forehead. Then he looks at you, expression awfully shy.

“Just because it’s there doesn’t mean we have to do anything with it,” you remind him, just in case he took your banter too seriously. It’s something you’ve both said many times, and you can tell he’s reassured. His tense grin eases to a smile as you brush your hair against the inside of his femur playfully. That had certainly been the verdict several times in the current “Sans’s intermittent genitalia roulette” era of your relationship. Some of them he just doesn’t like, and a few have been baffling enough that you’d come to a mutual decision to ignore it.

“At least it’s not _grabby_,” you add impishly, then you both share a little snicker, remembering that one time. It hadn’t let Sans’s fingers go until you’d resorted to telling him a few stories about Papyrus’s camping hygiene.

He hums in wordless agreement, the corners of his mouth quirking up a little more. “heh. well….actually. ‘m pretty sure this showed up once or twice before on my own,” he admits, iridescence shimmering across his cheeks before sinking back under cool-white bone. “_jus_’ that,” he elaborates, letting one socket slide shut. His good mood seems to be restoring itself quickly. “messed with it a lil bit, but…” By his expression, it hadn’t been much to write home about. “don’t think i realized exactly what it _was_ til now?” He makes his throat-clearing noise, then repeats it until it’s a snorty little laugh. “’s kinda tight,” he whispers, shoulders twitching with giggles as he glances to the side. “…but, uh. _you_ interested in messing with it? maybe do the thing you said?”

Your stroke the outside of his femur and let him bask in your attention for a moment, chin resting on your palm as you watch him sprawl there shamelessly, one arm up over his head and loosely grasping at the pillow under it. His legs are bent out and relaxed, phalanges still wrapped around his genitalia. He waggles it at you playfully when he notices you watching, pets your leg with his creepy skeleton toes and gives you a cheeky grin. He likes it when you take your time, so you lean in closer to bring some drama to the moment. His pelvis looks so _full_, his magic heavy and glistening. It’s really doing something for you.

“I’ve always dreamed of the day someone would finally ask me to play with their magic skeleton asshole,” you gush low and passionate at his genitalia, then interrupt his giggle by stroking your thumb along the shivery-dense magic that almost meets his femur.

“bet you say that to all the skeleton assholes,” he snerks back as you push his legs farther apart and duck down between them.

“Nope, just you.” You cut off any further sass except a soft gasp as you touch the tight little bud of magic with the tip of your tongue. It tastes just like he always does, magnetic and spicy. He lets out a shaky breath as you kiss it with more confidence, lapping and pushing at it with your tongue.

“oh, _fuck_,” he whispers high and soft, narrowing his sockets and lifting his head to peer down at you as he gives his genitalia a few shivery strokes. “that’s, uh… it’s, y-you, yohhhhh….” His voice wheedles away as he lets his skull fall back into the pillow with a puffing sound.

His response gets you pretty excited, and you end up putting his legs over your shoulders and going to town while he gasps and jerks off with increasing enthusiasm. Once or twice the movement of his hand gets a little frantic, but each time he stops and squeezes himself with a nasal, plaintive exhale. He breathes through it until his hand slowly starts moving again with a pleased hum. The third time it happens he lets go and grips his femurs instead, slides them along with a shaky rasp, so you pull away and lean up to look at him. His sockets are shut, and he looks kinda tense.

“Need a break?”

“y…yeah, gimme a sec,” he says softly, so you rest your head against his slim white leg and watch him catch his breath. He crosses his forearms over his face as his breathing steadies out.

“holy shit,” he mutters after a minute or so, takes his arms down and tucks his hands under the pillow to either side of his skull. His whole body does a long, shuddery stretch like a bone cat, and he opens his sockets to look down at you with wide, fuzzy white points.

“Is it too much?” you ask quietly.

“...no.” He takes a deep breath. “no...it’s _good_. will you fuck me in there?” He moans out loud when he sees whatever expression you make, then again when your fingers touch him lightly. “use that thing we like sometimes?” he adds, all cute and hopeful, flushed from chin to forehead.

Ohhh my goodness. Sans wants you to fuck him in the ass. You may or may not have had some remarkably wet dreams about this. And you were pretty sure they were gonna stay dreams, considering you never even knew he even _had_ an ass...not that you’re about to look a gift ass in the mouth. You find yourself trying to remember what the date is, just in case it ends up being your _ass_iversary, and---okay, yeah. You need to slow your roll. Also to breathe a little more normally.

“Let’s see if you like anything inside first, okay?” you manage, although you sound like you’ve been jogging. He nods agreeably enough, but his face is tense with anticipation. You test his novel opening curiously, but it’s still really tight even after your makeout session with it. You hum thoughtfully, then lean over and grab the little thing of neutral oil you keep near the bed to use for massage, and every once in a while to grease a bone or two. You consider his neglected genitalia a moment, then offer the bottle.

“Do you want any?” He looks confused a moment, then smiles and shakes his head.

“nah. feels like ‘m bout to go off like a shot already.” He gives you a little wink, reaches up and holds on to the pillow instead of playing with himself anymore.

You push a single digit about two inches inside to not much response. “How’s that?”

“mm…” Sans smiles gently at the ceiling. “…weird.”

“Want me to stop?”

He shakes his head, closes his sockets. “nah, s’jus’...pointy? try two at once, maybe.”

He shivers and groans as you pull your finger out, even though you do it super slow. You kiss the inside of his femur, then set your chin on your free hand and set the tips of two fingers against his entrance. It’s too tense even with how slick it is, so you apply gentle pressure and let his body figure out if it feels like being penetrated or not. Eventually it relaxes under your unhurried circling, every so often holding your fingers out stiffly in offering. His rounded exhale as they finally ease in adds itself right to the heat in your lower belly. Cool air hits soaking wetness between your legs when you shift a little, and they slip in deeper as he presents into the pressure.

He wasn’t kidding about it being tight, but that seems to be just the entrance. Almost feels like a soft rubberband around the base of your fingers or something, but he’s hot and supple inside. His sockets are still scrunched shut, but thoughtfully, not pained or anything. He frees a hand to gesture, the back of it set against his frontal bone as he considers.

“gimme one a these.” He curls a little hello with two phalanges, then grasps the fabric again. You give him one of those, feel something inside him responding under the pads of your fingers as he makes a short, choked noise.

“ohh, there we go…” he breathes, face smoothing out into a very promising expression as he presents into your fingers, taking you a bit deeper and relaxing around them. “think that’s a sweet spot,” he adds shakily. When you do it again, he gasps and looks down at his genitalia twitching in response. Third time’s the charm, and he moans in soft surprise.

“oh…okay. turns out that’s, uh.” He does his magic-clearing not-a-throat noise, shoulders shimmying as he lets the shivers take him. “...phew. s’ way better with both at once.” His head puffs back into the pillow, and he groans as you curl your fingers inside some more rather than doing any in-and-out, working the tightness open at his entrance.

“...fuck.” It’s a barely-there whisper. “it’s good.”

His breathing goes ragged as you pull out a tiny bit. When you curve back in, you _see_ the exact moment when a fine mist of magic comes up on all his bones at once. Again, and this time you feel him shed inside. It gathers wetly at the quivering surface of his genitalia too, beading up until a slow trickle makes its way down its twitching length. Kind of reminds you of precome. Hot.

Every time you think he just did the sexiest thing you’ve ever seen, he proves you wrong. A slow-clacking wave travels through his spine starting just under his skull; he moans breathily as it shudders all the way down to his pelvis. He pushes against you hard just as the shiver hits his coccyx, impaling himself. He whispers for more, and his clawed fingers zip hard against the cloth of the pillowcase to become fists as you give it. Sans’s whole body undulates around your barely-thrusting fingers, yearning for depth as his abandoned, needy genitalia jerks and throbs.

You feel a nonspecific strain that you ignore because you’re utterly transfixed, try pushing in a little deeper but you feel kind of dizzy, you--

\--only realize you’ve been holding your breath when it escapes you in a loud, ravenous moan. You suck air in shakily, and now you’re just panting with raw, unbridled need.

His sockets open, and he sees it in your face.

“Sorry, I, um…” Your voice is a desperate husk, and you’re sure the fact that you’re igniting whole new worlds of kinks you didn’t even know you had all over his shiny new skeleton butt is written at length on your face. With semicolons and adverbs. Iambic pentameter.

“wanna knock one out?” Sans offers, and you nod fervently despite being flustered to hell. “c’mere, lemme…yeah, that’s it…” You pretty much tear off your pants, eagerly rejoining the party. He holds his arm out, pulls you on top of him with a big hug and cups his nubbly, resonant palm between your legs. “jus’ take em out a sec,” he adds when your wrist gets twisted by the angle. He growls and tenses when you start to pull out, so you remove your fingers as slow as you can.

“it’s fine,” he soothes, “jus’ a lil tight….ohh, there you go.” Hand freed, shirt gone. You’re already gasping at a touch to your inner thigh; you make it a double when he slides warm bone along your molten folds. Sans lets out a pleased exhale when you whimper at the first stroke of his smooth-hard phalanges spreading your slick all over, and...wow, there’s a lot of it.

“nice,” he whispers admiringly against your shoulder. “you really like pokin’ around in there, huh?” You agree feebly, ducking down and pressing your hot face into his spicy neck. “mmmn,” he continues as you tongue his vertebrae, lifting his chin to ease your access, “me too. lot better’n i expected.” The arm around your body adjusts you slightly, and his genitalia tucks into a conveniently located crease made by your belly and thigh, bent up in a half-lying squat over his body. “yeah?”

“Yeah,” you whisper fervently into bone. “I like it.”

“mm…fuck, that’s good,” he rambles, starting to push his genitalia against your soft skin idly while he rubs yours back and forth. “you’re so wet for me…” Sliding becomes insistent little circles that get smaller, homing in on your aching, needy clit. Hot magic slips out of true, but he just slides gamely against your belly. Sans isn’t picky, especially when he’s on his back. You’re pretty sure he’d be overjoyed to rub off on you wherever was closest, since there doesn’t seem to be anything you have that he doesn’t like.

“’m real excited, too…” The breathy whisper shakes, then breaks as you feel his magic shed out on your belly, thick and tingly. “ohhh…that’s for _you_, darlin’… y-you got me _so_\--” He cuts himself off with a moan, tightens his hold on you and humps in shameless delight. His furious circling doesn’t falter; it tightens down right on _that spot_ and that’s all it takes to tip you over the edge. There’s a searing-hot point of exquisite, flash-frozen pleasure; the delicious release it triggers draws a strangled grunt out of you.

“yeah…_th__ere_ you go...” He lets you guide the pressure, holds steady to offer his palm for you to switch to, jerking your climax out into his hand. He lets out a delighted little coo when his slick length slips back into that crease. He sheds some more, heavy enough to make soft, wet noises as he speeds up, holding you tight as he draws out your pleasure. He slows when you do, though, then shudders to a hard stop with a stifled sob. You lean up and look into his face, then shift to smooth the desperation out of its hard flexibility with your hand. That is not the expression of someone who just found release.

“Do you not want to come?”

He cracks a socket open. “jus’ wanna wait for it.”

Hot. Sans is in one of his ‘edging himself as long as inhumanly possible’ moods. You smile and make a mental note to avoid the genitalia at his pubis until he asks, already feeling more patient. Like you can really concentrate on _him_ now, which is what you’d wanted all along.

“You want me to get the thing?”

He nods fervently, so you wobble over to the side of the bed and go rummaging in the toybox. He got around to fixing this a lot quicker than he usually gets around to most things. It only takes a moment to set it up; you spare a thought for whether his hasty repair means he felt bad for breaking it in the first place, or if it was more the fact that when he wants to use it, he _really_ wants to. It’s cute.

You err on the side of caution with the shape and size since Sans is kind of petite in general, although that doesn’t always apply to his junk. You glance at his ridiculously large, gently weeping genitalia and smirk as you slick up the toy; he makes a startling kissy-noise at you from somewhere in his skull, and you share a giggle.

He reaches for you eagerly as you clamber on top of him, your hand already migrating south to find his opening. It’s still soft and wet, but you take your time fingering and testing just to make sure it didn’t pull any tricks while you were away. After all, it’s not really a butthole. But it’s still acting like one for now, and after some careful plying, it seems like it’s ready for some action.

Sans pets your back over and over, then wraps his cute little bandy legs around you to help you line up. His breath catches at the first tentative (and unsuccessful) push. You kiss his mandible gently, take hold of his ilium and try again. His eyes quiver; a shuddery huff jerks out of him when it goes inside an inch or two.

“Hurts?” you ask quickly, already hesitating even as his arms tighten.

“yeah. not enough ta be a problem.” He writhes bonily under you, rolling his hips. “s’already goin’ away, like always. ‘m ready.”

A lot of sex things Sans likes also hurt sometimes. Touching souls has helped you understand more about that, too. Part of why it’s hard for him to communicate clearly about it is because he has sincere difficulty telling the difference between pain and pleasure. Funnily enough, it’s Grillby who helped you understand that Sans has multiple masochist modes. Pain-felt-as-pleasure is one which Grillby is okay with participating in sometimes; Sans-wants-to-be-punished is not.

You haven’t entirely decided what you’re comfortable with, but you’re willing to explore as long as he’s as honest with you. It’s a case by case basis. For Sans, being penetrated by anything (even his own fingers), almost always hurts at the start for him, no matter how turned on and prepped for it he is. You’re pretty sure it’s a facet of his sexual dysfunction. Even if he was cagey about it at first, it would be cruel to put a moratorium on it over something he can’t control. And the ‘not enough to be a problem’ means it’s unlikely to trigger his involuntary orgasm response.

You watch his eyes expand as you keep pressure on the toy with your pelvis, control the angle with your fingers underneath. You stay poised and follow his body’s lead as it slowly accepts the intrusion. When he closes his sockets you pause, waiting for him to adjust.

His expression’s vague and introverted, almost like when he’s calling his own soul. Concentrating on how he feels, taking his time to figure it out. Once again, you forcibly remind yourself to breathe.

“Good?”

He nods, but you wait for words.

“…fuck,” he concludes softly. “s’like…i c’n feel _everything_.” You take another shaky breath. “yeah…i can feel it when you breathe...” He trails off into a tight-whispered moan, arches up into you. You slide in more, but he gasps and flinches, then makes a sad sound as you stop pressing. “’s too deep for now. gotta …get loosened up or something.”

You look down at the shadow inside his pelvis. You really have no clue what goes on inside there when he’s like this, so who even knows _what_ needs to be loosened. As far as you know, once his genitalia emerges it’s like the inside of his mouth, not accessible from the other side. He’d definitely know better than you would.

He rocks up into you a few times, slow and careful. His smooth, flexible palms drift down your back, and he squeezes your butt speculatively. His sockets stay shut, like all his concentration’s tangled up with feeling what’s going on inside his body right now. He lets out a cracked little breath, and your soul flutters hard.

You take your hand underneath away since they toy’s staying where you’ve put it. He shivers and grunts when you give the rim of his opening a little caress goodbye, then lean comfortably on your elbows. You stay there for a bit, letting him wriggle under you with that pained-ecstatic expression, sighing and arching and using your buttcheeks as a fuckhandle while he tries to work himself open.

“Hey, shortiepie.”

A socket cracks open, the point inside broad as a ping pong ball and quivering with lust.

“I have an idea.”

The corners of his grin dimple gamely. “’s a sexy idea?”

“Yep.” You kiss his face, and he mewls softly. “I know how much you love lying down, but I think we should switch positions.”

He sighs in mock grief and nods. You lean up and start to pull out, but he surprises you by crying out, grabbing your upper arms desperately as the back of his skull grinds the pillow. You freeze and wait.

He just curses roughly, tense all over and holding you still.

“Are you okay?”

He nods quick and short, panting. “’s a lot,” he manages after a minute, starting to relax. “almost, uh. came. actually.” From his expression, that would not have been a happy time. His sockets open, and he takes a deep breath. “...phew. gotta _really_ snail it out, k?”

You do, but he still groans and shakes. The tight little cough he makes when the toy slips out makes you grab it, move it with your hand to stimulate yourself. Your enthusiasm’s kinda running down your thighs at this point. You make sure he wants to keep at it, and he does.

You get to your knees and help him up; he follows your prompting to kneel in front of you. You widen your stance and look down at him. Same darkly glistening pelvis from the back, no buttcheeks or anything, but the inside is the most opaque you’ve seen it. You trace the bones until you feel his expanded magic, find the slick opening tucked under the sweet little curve of his coccyx.

Sans leans into you with an anticipatory whine, cool-smooth hands reaching back to stroke the tops of your thighs eagerly. He arches back until he can rest his skull on your shoulder, looking at you with a pleading expression that goes straight to the heated tension between your legs. You reach between your bodies to line up, then fill him up slow and steady. For whatever reason, it’s easier going in than out.

“you were right, babe,” he pants while you hold steady and let him impale himself. “this’s gonna do it.” His unusually warm sacrum comes to rest against your lower belly.

“Good?”

“…yeah. s’ perfect.” His pelvis twitches against you. “fuck me, okay? please?”

You push your hips forward, holding his spine to keep him close to you. Glassy-smooth fingertips scrabble at your skin as you pull back, then fill him up again. The next time he moves quicker, and you follow his lead. You get maybe three or four short thrusts in at this new angle before his eyes open in surprise, points nearly transparent and filling the sockets as he draws in a quickening, strangled gasp.

“t-touch me,” he barely manages; he might already be coming. Welp, that’s what he gets for edging himself for like literally an hour. You take his hard length into your hand and stroke, savoring the feel of him throbbing rigidly in your gentle grip. His astonished voice tightens, getting louder until it peals out of him in brazen sobs. He shakes so hard you almost expect him to just tumble apart into a pile of bones on the bed, and it doesn’t seem like it actually ebbs much. He pants and begs for more, so you don’t stop. In less than five minutes he comes again with a hoarse scream, and his legs start shaking like he’s about to collapse.

“What do you need, babe?” you pant raggedly into his acoustic meatus, pressing your hips like an idling engine. You feel like you could fly to the moon right now, or at least fuck him for as long as he wants you to. You’re a sexy cyborg high on buttfucking endorphins.

“p-put me how you like it,” he croaks breathlessly, still shivering through aftershocks as you grind inside him deep and slow. His wrecked face is wet with shed magic, eyes loose with emotion and sensation as he does his best to focus on you. He paws clumsily at your busy hips. “…fuck me til you come.” The sound you make is one you don’t recognize, a kind of triumphant growl as you clutch him close. Wow, okay.

You ease him forward, just supporting him so he can move at his own pace to switch positions without trying to pull out again. It’s tricky but doable; you lean up and back and let him move his leg. You can’t help muttering “careful,” as he bends sharply at the hip joint to get his leg back to the other side of you.

You ease him down onto his back again, then stretch his arms out over his head and hold his hands. If he really wants you to come like this, this position’s your best bet even if you have to be careful. And you sure do love rolling those tiny, perfect little bones between your fingers. You let him squirm under you to position himself. You know this tilt; it’s the one where he can move to put more pressure where you need it. Sans’s spatial awareness sex talents are myriad and generous, and when it comes down to application, awesomely pragmatic. Who knows, maybe trajectory is one from his physics background.

You mean to say something like that, but his squirming becomes rhythmic rolling and what comes out instead is, “Fuck, _Sans_, you’re _so_ fucking hot, oh _shit_, love you...” Apparently that’s really working for him, because his response is so garbled even speaking from his soul won’t make it smooth into coherence. He cranes his neck back with a delighted cry, and you press in until he makes a tight, tender noise.

“c’mon,” he gasps when you hesitate and draw back a bit, worried it’s too deep like before. He wriggles under you to try and get even more, his genitalia brushing your belly. He arches so that’ll happen again, so eager he’s flopping like a bony fish beneath you. “i c’n take it, g-give me--” He groans desperately when you push with your weight behind it. You feel the softness of his integral magic as it oscillates all along your front; your belly presses into the space his isn’t, and you stay deep to let him rub his hard length against you. Your positioning lets his tightness squeeze the toy as you grind your bodies together, too out of breath and sweaty to do much up top but pant against each others’s faces.

When you start fucking him harder you let go of his hands, cross and curl your arms under his spine and over his shoulders so his smooth body doesn’t shift away; his arms slither around your waist. You clutch him close to keep him where you want him, right where it feels the best each time you move.

His choked little sobs are sometimes words, mostly variations of _yeah_ and _oh fuck _as his spine arches, pulling out all his little tricks to get you there like this. You let out a strange sob into his cervical vertebrae, staring down into the impossible darkness inside his body. Hard bones press deliciously all down your front, and under that you feel the chaotic roil of his soul resonating inside him, yearning toward you with an almost feral need.

Sans lets out a strangled, joyful grunt as you pull him down and shift the angle, and a faint quiver of silvery light happens inside his body. Your head snaps up, but his sockets are shut, unyielding bone creased into a pained, blissful expression.

“You okay?” you gasp.

“yeah,” he manages, his legs pulling you in hard. “’s too good, or, i dunno b-but don’ stop, _fuck_, please…”

You shove your face back down between his chin and shoulder, hold on tight and chase your own pleasure. Sans lets out a throaty, grateful shout as you plow him relentlessly, and your own peak’s so close you can taste it. His integral magic is tightening down rhythmically as increased resistance on the toy. You see a ghost of that silvery glow happening inside his body, each time accompanied by another ragged, desperate noise from him.

It seems like this is a good thing, even though you don’t know why it’s happening. His arms wrap you, smooth-pointed bones at the tips of his fingers scrabbling at the hot-slick skin of your back. He uses his legs too, pulling your bodies so tight and close you move together like parts of a machine made of bone and flesh, magic and technology.

And then it’s here, a blinding peak followed by spasming release. You let out an astonished groan, short-quick little thrusts as he moves to meet you, bucking up until you’re both gasping and writhing. Sans’s voice cracks in an inarticulate wail right in your ear. His hand shoves hard and sudden between you, slick knuckles rubbing your belly and you realize he’s coming too. He clenches so tight the toy _stutter__s_ in a way you’ve never felt before, and holy shit. That sure is something, wringing out jerky little aftershocks of you. That silvery light glides through his ribcage again; for a sweaty split second you think you’re half-imagining, you can make out the outline of his lovely inverted heart. He hiccups, and it dissipates immediately. You slow to a stop, since he’s already going floppy.

“Holy shit,” you groan, shaking all over as hard as he ever has. “Oh, oh my god. Are you okay?”

He murmurs something that might have been intended to be words, but fall a bit short.

“Sans? Babe?”

“m’okay,” he manages, panting. His fingers twitch against your back, then his arms tighten to keep you close. One of his legs succumbs to the flop, sliding away with a light clatter.

“I’m gonna pull out.”

“need a minute,” he says breathlessly, gasps as you shift to stay like this with him for a little longer. Endorphins leave you shaky but still able to stay up on your elbows and folded legs in frogmode to avoid smushing him with your weight. Sans shivers and hums, catching his breath as he strokes your back soothingly.

“do it slow,” he whispers eventually, still holding on to you. His fingers tighten, and he lets out faint, nasal whimpers as you withdraw in stages, shuddering when it finally slips free.

“There you go,” you soothe quietly, then touch his soft, wet little opening with your fingers to make sure it’s...well, you’re not sure exactly, but he makes a shaky little mewl and finally opens his sockets to look at you. His breath sucks in through his teeth, eye lights trembling into an ecstatic texture as the very tip of your finger slips easily around the rim, then just inside it. No uneven spots. Nothing wetter than it should be, which is another sign of a wound to his magic. He moans softly as you explore his relaxed, well-fucked entrance.

“Sore?” you whisper, but he’s already shaking his head, even though the rest of him’s starting to shake right along with it. “Good,” you mutter absently. “Good deal.” You always check each other over anytime things get more intense or high impact than usual, but all signs point to him needing a little more than that right now. He buries his face against you and whines, the passage twitching weakly as you slide in deeper. He hasn’t let you go, even hitches his flop-ridden leg back around you too.

“more,” he breathes, so you add another finger.

He tilts into it, so you give him a curved little caress inside. His exhale sounds like it comes from his soul, and his body relaxes even more as you kiss the side of his skull insistently. You whisper how much you love him, how good that had been, how lovely he is. It feels _right_ somehow, giving him something as careful and easy as taking your pleasure inside him had been rough.

The length at his pubis is still hard, occasionally twitching to brush against your skin. You wonder if he wants to come again, but as you rub little circles inside he relaxes further instead of tensing up. He doesn’t touch his genitalia either, just lies there and holds you, takes what you give him. His magic twitches, trying to tighten around your digits but can’t quite manage it yet. It’s as if massaging that laxness leaches it out and into the rest of him.

Sans stays malleable and open as he presents into your fingers, silently begging for more depth. You push in as far as they’ll go, rock them gently in time with his tiny movements. He makes a thin, soft sound as a layer of magic sheds from his outside and inside at the same time. His pelvis shakes on its own like when he massages his departing genitalia, even though it stays right where it is.

You slowly pull your fingers out of his quivering softness before it tightens back up around you the way it’s trying to. More shed magic adds itself to his tearstained skull, and he exhales raggedly. You gather him up in your arms, roll to the side and hold him close. As an afterthought, you detach the toy and set it aside. You can tell one of his involuntary naps is coming on, which isn’t surprising, considering how hard you were playing.

“Was it good?”

“scary good,” Sans whispers unevenly.

“Sorry,” you reply, rubbing the back of his skull tenderly as he snuggles into you harder.

“don’t be,” he murmurs thickly. “don’t ever be sorry for that. you… when you were…”

Sans’s voice wavers, and he pulls a hand away to grasp the glistening shadow at the front of his pelvis. He holds his breath and rubs insistently, the edge of his nasal bone pressing your shoulder as his arm tightens. His leg’s up and over you, and he’s doing it right against your belly while you hold him close. You feel the hot tingle of his magic filling his hand as it spills over, a lot more than usual. His rounded exhale at its gentle release clutches sweetly at your soul.

It surprises you when he uses that hand to pet your belly reverently, slathering it with his spend. He lets out a cracked, satisfied sigh as he rubs it right into your skin to be absorbed. He’s never done that before, but its curling, effervescent penetration certainly feels good enough to make you shiver and hum.

“’s goin back now,” he sighs, sliding his arm back into the tangle of your limbs like a smooth, segmented snake.

“I wish I knew,” you whisper, then blush when you realize you’d actually spoken out loud. Sans makes a quirky little question sound against you. What he did was a monster sex thing, rubbing his shed magic on (into) you that way. An overflow of emotion, his chatty body spilling over with something it needs to get off its chest, so to speak. The prompt of another monster’s spend would coax it free, but since you don’t have any he just rubs himself to help it come out when it wants to.

His body wrote you a letter in a language yours can’t read, but apparently it was important enough to be hand-delivered.

“Sorry. I just meant, um. If I could taste that, I wonder what it would say.”

A quivery exhale.

“love you,” he whispers, voice and arms tight with emotion.

“I love you too,” you reply, a little confused.

“’s what it said,” he adds after kind of a long time, words thick and wobbly. “liked what you did after. when you were saying…thank you. makes me feel like you love me, wanted to…_had_ to say it back. fore it’d go back in.”

Oh. Apparently he _could_ feel your gratitude; you weren’t just imagining it. Then Sans goes limp, and you smile softly as his light snore vibrates out of his skull. You cuddle him close, but gently disentangle your mind from his soporific resonance like a sleepy limb, planning on staying awake while he does his thing. Sans won’t be asleep for very long, and when he wakes he wants to talk to you about something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Osteogenesis Sans is my favorite, so he gets a magic skeleton butthole first!! And by “first” I mean “I literally wrote 90% of this in the fall of 2019.” Oops.


	23. (Interlude 01)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Depeche Mode – Halo](https://youtu.be/tzxHdtokn4c)
> 
> **[realistic feelings about incest, rough/painful sex, memories of sexual violence, referenced rape]**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a fairly dicey read, so I wanted to just say that this is a scene between two people are are communicating in their own awful but effective ways. That being said, consensual isn't the same as healthy or pleasant. It's also incest.

Papyrus flexes his leatherette-encased fingers and watches his brother very closely. He always has, for various reasons. Guidance and reassurance, worry and love. Gauging his temperament, making sure he’s not trying to Go Away again.

Lust.

Right now, Sans seems like he’s about to jitter out from between his own bones. Even his lovely red eyes are trembling in their sockets.

Earlier today, he _dropped_ something.

He spent a while after “work” over at Grillby’s again, doing stars knows what. Sans goes there a lot, sometimes with his brother, but more often alone. Almost like he used to a long, long time ago.

Sometimes Papyrus lets himself realize Sans almost certainly _knows_.

Of course Papyrus had gone back to Grillby after putting Sans’s soul back into his body, asked him when Sans would wake up. He hadn’t even gotten to the part where he’d put his magic inside Sans when Grillby had roared out violently towards him, the DT pulling out all the stops on the LV he’d spent so very, desperately long keeping banked. Flame had touched bone, and Papyrus’s body had betrayed him as it always does.

Looking back on it now, Papyrus is sure Grillby was holding back. There’s a reason Grillby had been able to maintain a ceasefire until the person he’d trusted the most had been the one to break it. Grillby was one of the few monsters underground who’d been a match for Sans and Papyrus.

Papyrus isn’t even sure it had been an _attack_ at all, considering Papyrus still alive to tell the tale. Not that he ever actually would.

But the heat had made his magic shed, and the guilt he’d hidden from himself had rung true in his body trying to flee itself. Papyrus had felt the disbelieving rage and grief consuming Grillby. The tattered denial Papyrus had thrown over what he’d done to his brother was eaten away by flames as easily as his striped sweater had been. They both felt the truth: how _angry_ Papyrus been that Sans had started that bar fight, how _betrayed_ he’d felt that Sans thought he could just...just go _away__..._

And leave Papyrus _all alone_.

It wasn’t an encounter; just an attack, or so he thought. Grillby touched his bones, and all Papyrus could think of was how good Sans’s soul had felt around his fingers. To discover there was a way to finally hold him so tight Sans couldn’t _leave him_ ever again. Sans should have been dead. And the fact that he wasn’t was only because of a loophole that had been knotted into his soul by unspeakable violence. A loop that Papyrus’s unwitting fingers had found, then grabbed on to like a lifeline. He hadn’t for one moment considered the cost.

His magic poured into flames, desperate to confess his sins. And just as desperate to deny them, Papyrus had lashed out in turn with all of his fresh-minted DT and new LV roaring up out of him behind it.

Grillby certainly hadn’t expected it, and Papyrus hadn’t intended to. Or maybe that was just another lie he told himself, considering the result.

Hadn’t known what would happen, but faced with pain, terror, and guilt, Papyrus will always choose action before thought. He’d done something unthinkable, then done something just as bad to cover it up. He’d been shaking and gagging as the LV carved its way inside him, deepening his wounds as he gathered up every last bit of Grillby he could find.

Papyrus had tucked the silvery powder safe into the fireproof bed Sans would never find comfort in again.

“what the fuck are you staring at?” Sans barks suddenly. Papyrus wonders how long he’s been reading Papyrus’s train of thought go right on by across the front of his skull like a movie. Sans’s fingers shake, tangled hopelessly in the wreckage of a half-finished panel. A while, then.

Papyrus smiles cruelly. Nostalgia’s a bitch.

“YOU,” he simpers, and Sans’s facial expression changes drastically right before it goes blank.

Papyrus is trying very hard not to know the things his brother doesn’t want him to know. Why Sans isn’t like other monsters. Who made him that way. But what they’d done to get here tore down the wall between them, the one that they’d been leaning against to keep in place in tandem for countless centuries. Leaning into it so hard they never realize it had started holding _them_ up at some point, instead of the other way around.

They keep pretending it’s there, because they don’t know how to exist without it anymore.

Papyrus watches his brother cuss and shift, red as hell and knitting rows halfway over and over before unraveling it again while pretending to watch _It’s Mettaton_ together. Together, but not really.

But Papyrus knows his brother. Til now, ever since they’ve been here (<strike>_since what they _</strike><strike>_**did**_</strike><strike>_ to get here, something he won’t think about, he WON’T--_</strike>), Sans would have left before asking him _anything_, much less the overture he’d offered.

Something has _changed_.

He wants Papyrus, and he’s not leaving. He won’t ask, of course. He never has, and he probably never will. Instead, he’ll start hurting himself and destroying things, instigating explosive conflicts with others and making himself a bigger and bigger problem until Papyrus has to _do_ something about it.

Both the _it_ and the _something_ is Sans.

They’re doing what they always do: taking each others’ choices away until all that’s left is each other. Always a game Papyrus has energy for…but considering the circumstances, it’s probably best to get out ahead of it.

(Traitorous hope grips his soul in its fist, half to dust with wanting.)

“YOU SEEM AWFULLY FLUSTERED, BROTHER,” Papyrus says, tilting his head at his shaky, hunched sibling. Sans actually jumps a little. Wowie. “DARE I INQUIRE WHAT’S GOT YOUR PANTIES IN A TWIST THIS TIME?”

“fuck you,” he grunts resentfully, and Papyrus laughs, delighted. When Sans lurches up, kicks Papyrus’s legs out of his way and starts to shove past him out of the room, Papyrus stands and snatches him by the collar, yanks him close hard enough to make him hiss in surprise.

“WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU ABOUT BEING _DRAMATIC_, HMM?”

Sans just snarls wordlessly, and Papyrus’s grin sharpens as he gives the collar a jarring little shake. He even indulges in a shiver of anticipation, since he knows Sans will see it. He gets a bit handsy despite himself, and he watches the foci in his brother’s sockets go big and soft for a moment. Papyrus can smell his increasing arousal like earthy, rich syrup, but he pretends not to.

“well, if you’re gonna twist my arm,” Sans breathes, and Papyrus lets his laugh ring out again. He knows how much Sans loves it when Papyrus laughs for him. He hopes he’s not laying it on too thick…but in all fairness, it’s fucking funny.

He untwists the arm abruptly, uses the momentum to throw his tiny brother across the room to clatter into the corner with a pained grunt. He lands sprawled on all fours, but flops himself back into a sitting position easily. He doesn’t leave, though. Papyrus blocking the door doesn’t actually prevent anything except Sans having to acknowledge that this is a proposition. Papyrus lets Sans gather himself, get his shit together as much as he can.

(It’s been so long. _So long_. Papyrus has to mind his breathing carefully before hope makes him ruin everything again.)

“they’re fuckin’ again,” Sans says, iridescence shedding across his skull fetchingly. He swipes his face dry with a mittened hand, curls it up and tucks it back in. “it’s not like before. i’ll get _over_ it.”

“SOMEHOW, I DOUBT GETTING _OVER_ SOMETHING WOULD BE AS EFFECTIVE AS GETTING _UNDER_ SOMETHING...” Papyrus insists, voice softened to the rasp of bone against bone instead of the grate of steel, “...SANS.” They stopped saying each others’ names in public a long time ago. It gives too much away.

A name; a promise.

A gambit.

Sans doesn’t wink out. Papyrus lifts his chin to try and catch his scent.

“he’ll _see_,” Sans moans, lets a wracking shudder take him. “don’t.”

They have hard-won, agreed-upon words that actually _mean_ what he’s pretending to say. “Don’t” certainly isn’t one of them. That’s just a word Sans uses to help himself be brave enough to take what he wants. It’s always high-stakes between them, and Sans just offered up one of his tells on a platter.

Interesting.

“I HAVE THE STRANGEST FEELING THAT DOESN’T MATTER _QUITE_ AS MUCH AS IT USED TO,” Papyrus says brightly, and Sans freezes. Doesn’t look at him. Doesn’t just leave, even though Papyrus is giving him every opportunity. He talks to him instead. He’s not the little chatterbox he used to be back home, all insults and filth, constructs flung at his head. But Papyrus’s heart is so bone dry, every word sinks into his soul like warm honey.

“he’s me,” Sans grunts after too long a hesitation. He shrugs jerky and unnatural, like his limbs are being controlled by an inexperienced animator. “’course he was gonna figure it out eventually.”

Ahh. This universe’s Sans is remarkably slow on the uptake, except for when he isn’t. Even more likely Sans’s little altercation with himself had been a...coming clean, of sorts.

Now, _Papyrus’s_ counterpart had figured out _exactly_ how things are between he and his brother within the very first encounter they’d had. He’d kept it to himself for his own reasons. That’ll matter at some point, but Papyrus doesn’t give a shit about any of that right now. It can stay in the Strategy Bin where it belongs, fermenting into courses of action. All that matters to him right now is Sans, already shaking and needy. Already perfect, exactly how he is.

_Beautiful_.

“YOU HAVE AN INTERESTING HABIT OF RETROACTIVELY CHANGING YOUR TUNE AFTER YOU’VE ALREADY BEEN PROVEN WRONG,” Papyrus observes wryly. He lets out an indulgent sigh, but hope strangles its way into him on its backdraft. “HOWEVER, IT WOULD APPEAR THAT I LOVE YOU REGARDLESS.”

Reddish tears slide down Sans’s shattered, lovely face at his words, just like they always do.

“don’t,” he whispers again. Don’t love him. Don’t say nice things. Don’t try to make him feel good, because he doesn’t deserve it.

Papyrus scowls. He can smell his brother’s need from across the room now, that bittersweet desperation yawning in response ever since Papyrus said his name.

“I’VE BEEN NEGLECTING YOU.”

They haven’t done this since they got here, because every time he tried Sans _has_ said one of those words or phrases. Always the ones that mean stop entirely, and three of them that mean ‘and also leave me alone for an amount of time’.

Twice it had been the combination that means ‘until I come to you’.

That had hurt. Especially when they’d first arrived. He’d been forced to sit at the bar and pretend Sans didn’t exist, because they had promised not to leave. He couldn’t pay attention to anything except the grind of his own teeth until Sans had come out of the bathroom, but he’d obeyed. Papyrus sat and minded his own business, drank what he was given until Sans had come up and taken him by the arm hours later. It had been one of the most difficult things he’d ever done. The second one had hurt just as much, though.

Their first night in their own home, when Papyrus had blurted out his name unthinking. Not like now, though… like he _used_ to say it, and that had been even worse. The Annoying Little Brother, like before they’d ever….well. Before they became _this_. Papyrus had compounded his slip by touching him, even though he wanted nothing more than to offer comfort.

But pain is to be expected, and has always been irrelevant to Papyrus’s obedience. He has a lot to make up for, even though he’ll never be able to.

He hadn’t so much as met Sans’s eyes until his brother came back to him. Sans had wrapped his arms around Papyrus for a long, wordless time, his forehead grinding against Papyrus’s ribs as his shoulders shook silently. Sans taken him to Grillby’s after handing him a new shirt from his phone to replace the one he’d drenched with remorse. One of Sans’s; too short and revealing, still dusty from the place that made them this way. Papyrus had brought it to his face for a deep, openmouthed inhale before putting it on. Sans had worn that one a long, long time, kept it in his phone for a special apology he knew he’d have need of eventually.

He’d insisted on buying his drinks, too.

Papyrus’s soul feels like it’s crumbling, dry as dust with wanting. Then Sans’s eyes come up to hit him with a jolt of realization. This isn’t what Papyrus expected. Sans’s shit _is_ together.

There’s some other reason.

“you got a _chance_ now,” Sans whispers, face carved with inexplicable despair. “he won’t tell anybody. you c’n jus’ be _edge_.” Papyrus takes a step forward, then another when Sans shivers again. That soft, secret clacking sends a bolt of agitation through his magic. What Sans thinks is best is never what Sans wants. Whatever hurts Sans the most is what he tends to think is best, especially when it comes to Papyrus.

“BUT I’M NOT EDGE,” he says softly, just a fact. “I’M NOT _BOSS_, OR _BRO_, OR BIG GUY. HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN MY NAME AFTER ONE LITTLE TRIP TO ANOTHER DIMENSION?”

“can’t forget anything,” Sans says in that blank-husky voice. “’m not him.”

“THEN _PROVE_ IT,” Papyrus taunts, his approach excruciatingly slow.

Sans shivers and pants as his magic soaks the floor.

He won’t say it. He won’t say yes, and he won’t say no. And it’s okay, because Papyrus won’t make him say it, won’t make him _ask_. It doesn’t matter how many times he’s seen his brother crushed open and begging for it; Sans clings to the shreds of his dignity at the oddest times, and Papyrus would rather die than take them away. Sans can’t say anything, so Papyrus takes responsibility for what happens now. He takes _control_, and it feels just as good as ever.

But he sharpens the knife anyhow, because it gets him hard.

“I _MISS_ YOU, SANS,” he adds tightly.

“don’t,” Sans sobs hoarsely, voice emptied of meaning by need.

Papyrus exhales, pleased, then stalks over to his huddled brother and scoops him up. Sans thrashes feebly as he’s carried to the couch, but stills when he hears the calm in his harsh caw.

“YOU CAN FIGHT IF YOU'D LIKE TO, BROTHER.”

Sans goes limp and weepy instead, because of course he can’t not be contrary. Every once in a while he turns into a screeching, clawing hellcat just to mix it up, but Papyrus doesn’t mind either way. It’s Papyrus’s job to make sure Sans can do whatever he needs to in order to bear it. Unless those words happen, the outcome will be the same.

It’s entirely possible this hasn’t been a life-or-death necessity for a long time. Not the way it used to be. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s the only time Papyrus isn’t afraid, the only time Sans can’t deny that there’s someone who really _does_ love him.

It’s when they promise that no matter how much they suffer, at least they’ll do it together.

Sans does a sudden, writhing lurch just as Papyrus gets him down on the couch little spoon style; he crosses Sans’s arms in front of his chest and holds him there tight. Sans kicks him hard with his shod heel right on the shin, but it doesn’t really do anything, much less change anything, so Sans calms right down.

It wasn’t always like this, but that’s one of the things Papyrus chooses not to look at too closely. It’s not like he’d have to look at his own soul to know there’s a word for what Papyrus is. He already knows he’s _bad-wrong-__disgusting_, and he knows who’s fault it _really_ is that they’re like this. The only way either of them can stand it is by doing it more.

“merkin,” Sans hiccups quickly when gloved phalanges find the buckle on his collar.

Papyrus immediately lets go. He supposes that _is_ a bit much to ask at the moment, now he thinks about it. He takes the dense fake-fur of Sans’s hood between his pointed teeth instead of trembling vertebrae. Papyrus has his own moments where he’s needed the help to get there, and his body has overrides built in just like Sans’s. If he hurts Sans until Sans’s magic sheds, he gets hard no matter how sick, scared, disgusted, or exhausted he is. No matter how covered in dust, shaking with his own pain and wounds, in unsafe places or afraid for his life. Papyrus gives his brother whatever he needs, whenever he needs it. In front of someone they’d both thought was already dead once; they’d made it true after, then both firmly decided that correcting their mistake made the deadness retroactive.

It’s not like Papyrus needs the help; he’s been ready to go since he picked Sans up. He’s still suspiciously pliant against him, back to Papyrus’s front and traitorous arms crossed immobile, held securely in place by the smallest fraction of Papyrus’s strength. He slips his fingers under the supple leather and thumbs the old marks instead, patterns as familiar as the scars on his own bones. The collar hidden by the collar. Certainly enjoyable to stroke and needle with fingertips, to remind them both of why they’re there. A mournful, barely-there moan escapes Sans when he takes his fingers away; he cries out when they needle elsewhere instead. Papyrus dutifully treads the line between what Sans will allow and what he needs to get where they’re going. He can’t linger too long; Sans gets explosively angry if he suspects Papyrus is trying to get him ready, much less attempting to pleasure him.

Papyrus _can_ do this blind and injured, but he generally prefers not. One crack in his skull’s enough, thanks. Sans had performed his version of an apology later, but Papyrus really should have known better than trying to use his mouth for anything but biting. As soon as he feels Sans get hot around his fingers, he doesn’t bother waiting anymore. He opens his pants, tugs his brother’s shorts down, and does what they both want him to do.

He hates the helpless, agonized sound Sans can never keep inside; he loves it. Loves _him_. It’ll hurt less after a few minutes. He’s not especially rough, so he doesn’t get the reward of that lovely-awful sound again. Sans only hiccups faintly, but Papyrus can taste him now, and that’s even better.

“papyrus,” Sans whisper-sobs. “...papy, _please_…”

Papyrus loses it and comes just like that when he hears the pleading note harmonize its way into that deep lowercase voice. A secret sound he only hears when they’re together. Just like the covert glimpses of Sans’s glistening integral magic thickening to fill his pelvis with its shadowy song, the intoxicating sugared-petrichor scent of Sans’s need, the sharp spice of his pain. Sans’s soul hasn’t answered his call yet, so he couldn’t even let him share it. He pants raggedly and keeps going, trying to encourage his own magic to spend so at least Sans can taste it. Oh, well.

“...pap...” It’s a shaky whine now.

Papyrus’s desperate groan huffs through the plush fake fur between his teeth. They both went through phases where they tried not to make any sounds. Tried not talking at all or refusing to look at each other, tried calling each other different names or discussing irrelevant, mundane things like what to have for breakfast. They left the TV on, turned it off. Tried hiding in the dark, tried going outside, even. Tried just about everything. It’s hilarious to Papyrus in retrospect that they ever thought anything could make fucking your brother seem like anything but exactly what it is.

He concentrates, focuses his voice. “WHAT IS IT, SANS?”

Sans’s breath hitches sharply as he struggles a little. He likes to make sure he can’t move his arms, and Papyrus likes to _make_ him feel sure (<strike>safe</strike>).

“don’t stop,” he demands, rough and desperate. “make me come.”

Papyrus moves one hand away slowly from Sans’s iliac crest, pulls the crossed arms down with the other to make room at his sternum. He can make him answer without it, but Sans still wants to sometimes.

Papyrus moans, and when he’s ready, he _**pulls**_

(<strike>_\--and he very much _</strike><strike>_**doesn’t think about**_</strike><strike>_ the last time he saw Sans’s soul, the way it looked sinking into his own, _</strike><strike>_**becoming**_</strike><strike>_ each other until the truth just---_</strike>)

and his brother answers his call.

Shame and terrible need scour across Sans’s reddened soul like a dust storm on some uninhabitable planet. Papyrus sheds when he sees it, causing them both to make even more noise than they have been. Papyrus prefers to watch his brother come; he knows how much it hurts. He also likes the choked cry Sans makes when Papyrus’s gaze grows keen with anticipation. Wine-red eyes delve with merciless precision, flinging open curtains and digging through drawers. The little chase game they play while Sans wrestles his conscience. Sans is still fighting, and he desperately wants to be able to stop. To give up, to quit (<strike>to finally rest</strike>), to… no, he (<strike>_wants to feel good_</strike>)_, he** wants **it**.** _

Sans wants to be _punished_ for what he’s done, then punished even more for needing to be. It’s the only way he can live with it. Papyrus should get some use out of him in the meantime. Papyrus knows a hundred ways to hurt his brother without damaging him, but he’s only allowed one way to make him feel good without hurting. He does one of the first until he meets Sans’s request, his own low cry sliding silent under his brother's hoarse scream. He stills his body as he prepares to do the second.

They moan in relieved unison once his fingers slide in.

What they share is an uneasy truth: even if they could stop doing this to (with) each other, neither of them actually _wants_ to stop. Not anymore. Not even now that everything’s changed, and everything they’ve ever known is gone. They had time underground, more time than can be counted. They’ve fucked for every possible reason, and the reason they’re doing it now is the worst one of all: because they want to.

Papyrus waits for the breakneck agony of Sans’s climax to fade completely before he spreads his fingers wide and crooks them, fills him up with love and reassurance instead of pain and pleasure. His own breathing quickens in anticipation, then Sans lets out the deep, raw sound he only makes when Papyrus pushes his magic in.

This doesn’t hurt Sans the way it used to, even if it’s slightly uncomfortable. Papyrus’s control is unparalleled. That first little twinge of _not-him_ doesn’t make Sans come anymore, especially not if he already did. It’s been a while, though. Probably why Sans wanted to before. They sigh and linger over it, even as shared shame scours them raw. Sans’s LV-drowned patience reasserts itself with his brother’s coaxing, and they share it all over again to let the moment hang eternal for as long as possible, even though it hurts. Most of the time once Papyrus touches Sans, their genitalia slinks back to its respective hiding spots to be ignored. This time Sans wants to keep going, and he shivers hard when he feels the surge of Papyrus’s neglected but still-hopeful soul gentle against his back.

Sans moans vaguely like he’s half asleep. It’s times like now when sex hurts the least for him. Sometimes even starts to feel good in a different way, if he doesn’t lose interest before then. When he doesn’t have to work towards anything, when he doesn’t have to _try_ anymore...he already came like an alley stabbing, so he doesn’t have to worry so much that it might happen when he’s not expecting it. Papyrus has him, he won’t _let_ that happen. Won’t let Sans get hurt in ways he’s not expecting, won’t let him claw at himself, takes control when Sans loses it. Papyrus chokes on the tangle of Sans’s thready, strange emotions; Papyrus is never rough when it gets like this. He’s so careful, like Sans is-

(<strike>important</strike>)

-like Sans can stop fighting the battle he lost by being born at all and just _exist_, be touched, and… and feel…feel _loved_. He knows there are things to love about himself, because he brother _makes_ him know. He uses his body to push everything he loves about him right into his soul. Sans can’t prevent it, can’t argue, can’t stop him. He just drinks it in like he’ll die without it, and doesn’t care if that’s still true or not. Tears of joy and degradation pour unheeded from his sockets. All he feels is how Papyrus wants him to feel, his brother’s love filling the void where his love for himself was carved out with a thousand tiny nicks of the scalpel.

Even if it isn’t like it used to be, without _this_ Sans can’t see any point to living. Not anymore.

Papyrus’s grip tightens, and his leg twines his brother’s as Sans makes him know it, makes him understand that he wouldn’t stop if everyone found out, if they tried to _make_ them stop. Nothing matters except feeling how much Papyrus loves him. Papyrus hiccups and tries not to fall apart as he feels it starting to _happen_; he bites down on Sans’s clothes hard to help him wait for it. It’s possible the surge of Papyrus’s soul yearning fruitlessly toward him helps it along where his chest is pressed against Sans’s back. He keeps his burbling excitement held carefully away so he doesn’t ruin this for them.

Papyrus lets Sans’s arms go.

Sans takes his brother’s hand, pulls the glove off in one quick motion.

Brings impossibly long phalanges up to his face and exhales explosively as he fits each digit exactly where it goes, presses in to hold him together. Sans’s eyes blend out useless and heavy as his body-mind responds to being touched this way, so he closes his sockets around them. He yanks the false tooth out, eagerly pushes the tip of Papyrus’s middle phalanx right into his mouth.

Sans brings his other hand up to where Papyrus touches his soul, and taps out the puzzle on his carpals. If he solves it...oh. This one’s easy. He follows the instructions, touches in the pattern that should untie the stitches. He holds his face tighter, pulls Sans’s skull back until his occipital bone grinds on his clothed clavicle. Papyrus pulls with the leg he has twined, stretching Sans out and open for him like taffy as knots come unraveled. He clutches his face hard to keep him together while he mercilessly takes him apart.

The last of his pain boils away into vapor and Papyrus can taste the misty droplets of pleasure it leaves behind: a strange, fluttery-faint watercolor that doesn’t peak, doesn’t go anywhere. It’s brandy-sweet and barely there at all, but Papyrus coughs and shudders as it sheds on him like it’s more than he can handle. Sans just shivers and opens his soul as much as he can, his neck craning back even more as he offers this up, too: the rare fragility of his pure-pleasure like a hummingbird’s heartbeat, ready to be crushed out of existence the moment it’s held too tight.

Papyrus tries to nudge a little more of this feeling into him, and his breath sucks in hard as Sans sheds out again, his body letting him in more even though Papyrus isn’t trying to make that happen. To his surprise, Sans pushes back into _him_ with a soft huffing noise. Sans rarely moves under his own motivation, but now he keeps going.

Sans’s thin, hard fingers touch his iliac crest hesitantly, then take hold to pull until bone meets bone. His other hand reaches back, finds the top of his skull and traces his coronal sutures, finds his scar and explores that, too. God, this is...it’s too much. Papyrus’s hands are occupied with Sans’s soul and his face; this is all Sans. Sans arches back to follow as Papyrus hesitates, then keeps going.

Papyrus exhales in ragged astonishment. Sans makes tiny, hesitant movements, feebly attempting to share the threadbare web of everything he’s got. Tries to make himself feel good doing this, even though he doesn’t really know how. Sans makes another soft huff; he knows it’s not much, but he wants Papyrus to have it.

Even if it’s a pleasure as barely-there and worthless as Sans is.

Papyrus whimpers through dense fake fur as he comes again after all. It doubles him over until his frontal bone rasps softly against the top of Sans’s skull. Papyrus grips Sans shaky-close, drowning in the contrast between Sans’s ethereal, half-conscious delight and the scouring strength of his own. Papyrus lets Sans feel that too, since he missed out on the one from before.

He pushes the rush of sensations born of Sans’s pleasure instead of his pain into him, along with his conviction of Sans’s worth and the ecstatic agony of his love for him. Papyrus uses every bit of skill he has to build a feedback loop, lets it grow as much as possible and sinks it deep with his magic. Lets him taste it in his mouth to heighten it, pushed out where his finger slips through the hole in his broken smile.

Papyrus’s pelvis barely moves, jaw grinding for control so he doesn’t crush the bent-winged butterfly of Sans’s tenuous enjoyment. Sans’s phalanges rattle lightly against his iliac crest before his grip firms, and Sans makes a strange, thready noise as he uses the leverage to show him it’s okay, he can take it. He wants to be _useful_.

Papyrus tries to make him understand that Papyrus belongs to Sans, and so does his pleasure. Tries to show him how Sans’s body still feels good to him even when he’s not hurting it. Sans jerks and makes a low, guttural noise like he’s dying. It almost works.

It never works. Sans starts to close up again so Papyrus might as well let him feel how he’s sorry, he’s _so_ fucking sorry. Just like he always does. They have special words for ‘no’ because that’s something his brother can’t tell him, and he never should have had to. He’s sorry for being so ruinously stupid, for not listening to the little voice inside trying to tell him he was doing something bad. Sorry he let losing Sans break him until he did the only thing worse than losing him.

Papyrus took Sans’s choice away, and he understands why he can’t just give it back now like nothing happened.

Sans refuses to feel it, refuses to hear it with his body or his soul. Papyrus lets a few bittersharp tears escape closed sockets; he tried to fix his brother, and instead he broke them both beyond repair (<strike>Papyrus’s fault</strike>).

He’s crowded out by a wall of absolute denial. Sans spent Papyrus’s whole life locking him up, staying away, leaving him alone to chew himself up. Then he tried to leave Papyrus for good; it was too hard and he just _gave up_. Acknowledging an apology would make it seem like Papyrus has something to be sorry _for_ (<strike>Sans’s fault</strike>).

He just makes his soft cry like a mourning dove as Papyrus reties the loving knots that keep him (<strike>_SsTtAaYy_</strike><strike>_(please)_</strike><strike>_WwIiTtHh_</strike><strike>_(PLEASE)_</strike><strike>_MmEe_</strike>)

**here**, right where he belongs, puts him back where he goes, safe and sound.

Papyrus _stays_, holds him tight and whispers endearments just like always. He fumbles the tooth out of Sans’s shaking grip, clicks it back into place with the clever little half-turn to lock it. He strokes distal phalanges across the sunken bone again and again. Papyrus keeps his own teeth shut to make his voice as soft as he can, tells his brother he loves him like a mantra.

Sans starts crying again, then shocks his brother to stillness by telling him he loves him, too. Tells him while Papyrus is still inside him, both of them sticky with spent magic and shame. Papyrus wipes the tears off his brother’s face with his scarf, then he rubs Sans’s ribs in soothing circles as a lingering reminder. He curls around him protectively and stays like that until their integral magic slinks back between their bones like something that can’t survive the light of day.

Sans says his name almost like he used to before, soft and calm instead of desperate with need, a sound he barely remembers. His voice is husked and wavering with exhaustion, but Papyrus can hear it anyhow.

“love you, papy,” he whispers again. “m’sorry.”

Papyrus already knows his brother still loves him, even though they’re like this.

But the love Sans is talking about right now is the one that exists _because_ they’re like this. It’s ugly and fucked up and it hurts as much as it heals. But it was all they had for so long, and even now neither one wants to let it go. It’s the warp threads that allowed them to weave the tattered tapestry of their continued existences; without the warp the weft falls to dust. It’s the reason they both survived. To deny it at this point would undo themselves, unravel each other.

Papyrus holds Sans in his arms until his soft, full magic resonates loosely into sleep, trying not to think about the truth they’d shared when they’d done what they had to do to escape. Tries not to think about Sans’s despair that he and his brother had fallen right into the roles they’d (<strike>been carved up on purpose to fit</strike>)…

He tries not to think of the times he’d almost been grateful that he’d accidentally murdered his brother’s lover, if only because it had made every person underground pay attention until they thought they figured out why. Made them so terrified of Papyrus he’d had to kill relatively few people in order to get them to leave Sans alone for good. It wasn’t the murdery part they were scared of, either. Hell, everyone _killed_ people. Killing isn’t what gained him the nicknames, or the abject terror in people’s eyes.

The Great and Terrible Papyrus… to his face.

_Brotherless_ behind his back, whispered in the few dark corners Sans wouldn’t admit he had eyes. (He had them everywhere, even though they never left his skull. Many of those whispers found themselves silenced, but it persisted mostly because “Brotherless” was the _only_ thing Asgore would call him, especially after he became Captain of the Guard). An allusion to something that shouldn’t be possible, but somehow Papyrus had actually managed it.

“Brotherless” to imply that what Papyrus had done had made his brother stop existing, replacing Sans’s will with his own in the crudest, cruelest, most disgusting way imaginable. Papyrus has his reasons for being decidedly un-fond of nicknames.

Sure, plenty of monsters did things to each others’ bodies without permission. They were openly encouraged to kill each other, after all. Even though they knew how bad it was, even after nearly all of them had felt part of themselves die when it was done to them…they told themselves _nothing_ happened. And if it had, it couldn’t have been that bad. But imagining someone able to call their soul in anger and hatred, to be compelled to answer, to be _touched_ by it… It was unthinkable.

Papyrus the Brotherless hadn’t just committed rape. He’d invented it.

A bar full of people had _seen_ Sans die. When he’d reappeared a while later with the smashed face and a dusty new collar, he’d also reeked unmistakably of his brother’s sexual release, sharp-sour with anger and violence. They’d seen the terror and despair in Sans’s eyes before he’d entirely learned to hide it, seen him flinch and shrink before he learned to force stillness into his body. When Sans had seen the shell of Grillby’s, found what was in his bed, they’d all witnessed Sans stagger out and try to die as hard as he could. They saw him fail, then watched his brother drag him back into their house, screaming and clawing at himself.

Gathered outside and unsure what to do, they’d felt what happened next. Two bunnies had dusted right on the stairs.

Later, a few more learned the price of asking Sans about what happened. Sans gained LV nearly as quickly as Papyrus had, and the underground became a worse place one murder at a time. Sans ruthlessly turned every soft heart against him, a handleless blade of revenge against a world that he decided had crushed his brother’s innocence. Sans punished those who asked him if he needed help or rescue just as thoroughly as he punished those he heard calling Papyrus Brotherless. Papyrus held Sans while Sans mewled and puked and seized with LV and DT, with acting so directly against his nature.

Papyrus kind of wishes “Crappy Papy, the Brotherfucking Troglodyte” had caught on instead. It was more honest, less insulting to Sans, and had significantly more dramatic flair, besides. Although Papyrus had dusted the only person LV-crazed enough to actually _call_ him that, he had to admit it had been fucking hilarious.

Papyrus still misses Undyne.

If she hadn’t been so far gone she was killing anyone who got close enough for her to reach, including Gerson and at least one child…but she’d been LV 19, and her time had come. No one else could stop her, except maybe Asgore. And everyone knew he’d let her carve a swath all the way to the capital before unsticking those fluffybuns from his worthless perch. Nearly a quarter of Papyrus’s LV had come from that little shitshow.

A great deal of the rest came from Muffet, long before. It had been a cold, deliberate removal once Papyrus found out how long and how severely she’d been extorting his brother for the ‘rent’ on the tiny stone coffin Papyrus had been ‘raised’ in. Somewhere only Sans and spiders could get to, keeping Papyrus ‘safe’ from the rest of the underground. Possibly a delusion, but one that was all his brother had to cling to amidst the constant terrorization that became more and more commonplace as Papyrus grew. He’d been a baby when the Muffet situation had begun, and it probably seemed like a good idea at first. And after a few years of doing what Sans did to pay her ruinous fees… well. Sans probably thought better of Papyrus being anywhere else, even with Sans right there trying to protect him.

Because, it turned out, Sans had not even been able to protect himself.

It took Papyrus a very long time to realize Sans hadn’t really had much choice. Even as stupid as he is, Papyrus eventually saw enough to understand that what Sans did was quite probably the only way to ensure Papyrus’s survival.

A big part of him just thought his brother must have hated him. It had come as a shock to realize it hadn’t been true.

Papyrus absently caresses under Sans’s collar to soothe himself. That combined with Sans’s little pleasure strolls through Snowdin probably helped keep the whispers to a dull roar. Sans seemed to take a perverse pleasure in blatantly insulting random passersby while still seething-full of his brother’s magic, swaying to waft the apples-and-knives scent of Papyrus’s sadistic spend. Sans did his best to dust anyone stupid enough to slander Papyrus instead of just calling Sans a slitface whore and going about their business.

“Brotherless” became plenty terrifying enough on its own. After all, what would someone who’d do that to his own brother do to _you_? Maybe the people he dusted were getting off easy. A possibility so horrific that even the sight of a collar like Sans’s could hold the magic of intimidation, coercion, _possession_. The promise of a revenge so unspeakable that speaking of it could actually kill you. You’d never smell Sans coming when he means business, lulled into a false sense of security by those awful, reeking cigars.

All traditions have to start somewhere, he supposes.

But…

…It’s different now.

Oops.

Papyrus finally understands what Sans meant. When he said he could just be _Edge_ here, he didn’t mean ‘instead of Papyrus’.

He meant instead of _Brotherless_.

This place’s Sans would have kept what he’d discovered to himself. Red had meant they could live here _as_ brothers, without the taint of incest reeking out of every osseous pore. He curses himself for being so fucking _slow_, so ruinously stupid, but he doesn't regret it.

Sans should know better than anyone that even if no one here knows… _Papyrus_ would know, and that’s all that matters. He feels his sins crawling on his back, eating away at his soul, snoring gently in his cruel and loving embrace. The truth they’d shared when Papyrus slid inside Sans settles over them in the afterglow like a smothering blanket.

You can move to an entirely new universe, but you can’t un-fuck your brother.

The monsters of this place might have weak senses, but he has to believe they’ll notice eventually. He doesn’t care, even though he probably should. He just throws it in the Strategy Bin and that’s that. Sans had offered Papyrus a choice, and even if he didn’t entirely understand, he still made it.

He’s Papyrus. He knows who he is. When faced with indecision and fear, he chooses action. He doesn’t think about what he’s done; he already knows it’s the worst thing possible. He thinks about what he’s _going_ to do, and how to justify it.

But then the memory of Grillby’s thin smile as he sat the glass on the table in front of Papyrus hits him all over again. The smile that meant Papyrus would be leaving in a dustpan if he didn’t drink what he was given. This isn’t a softer place than the one they left, or…well. It _is_, but Papyrus is beginning to understand the ruthlessness of those who protect its softness. After all, _he_ has something he’s protecting, too.

“shut the fuck up, paps,” comes a toothless growl, and he moves his bones away from the brother he’d awakened with his weird feelings. He doesn’t apologize, and his precious armful settles with another wibbly little huff. Finally paying his tab had been painful, but…that’s fitting for someone like him. Freed of his debt, it occurs to him that maybe he should try to be someone _better_. Someone who can do better when faced with unbearable choices.

Papyrus looks directly into the terrifying, unknown depths of his heart…

and decides to become Edge.

Edge forces stillness into his shaking hands as he cuddles tight into his brother to crowd the fear out. He can be Edge for S….for _Red_. They can _still_ be Red and Edge here. It just… turns out Red and Edge fuck each other, too. He pulls Red’s hood up so he can smother his face in it. Shaken to the core and desperate not to acknowledge it, he allows Red’s soporific resonance to pull him into sleep neither of them technically need yet. Well, their bodies don’t, but _they_ sure need a break from existing.

Edge barely manages to tug their clothing back into place before unconsciousness obliterates them at their most vulnerable like a mercy killing.


End file.
